Yes, I’m not a silver spoon–fortunate son. I do not often write about my past as it sometimes compromises my professional position. Working within a conservative institution I cannot always be honest about my life experiences. Up until last year (I did this for six years at two different universitites) I used to start off my writing classes by giving my background and experiences, felt comfortable enough to seek me for advice with life crisis that the typical college instructor wouldn’t understand (sexual assault, drug problems, family problems, arrests, etc…).

Last year immediately after having a great discussion with my honors writing course in which students questioned me about my life, a self-identified conservative student (definitely silver spoon) marched out of the classroom and went to the dean’s office and tried to get me fired … since then I have been a little bit hesitant to be so open with my students–sad, but necessary (until I’m a tenured professor). This is also why I use a pseudonym on my blog–even though my students all know it is mine–push comes to shove … I have no idea who that Thivai character is…

Anyways, I appreciate very much your response and I think we agree on more than we may have thought, but still disagree on some very key issues–my response will have to wait a bit though as it is 6:30 and I have to teach this morning.

Here are two links in the meantime. Perhaps they may shed some light on why I find your dualistic framing of issues problematic.

The first is a response of mine to an essay about mentoring for social justice:

Are You Mentoring for Social Justice

The second is a weblog I have set up for an education activist group in Kentucky (Oso actually hooked me up with them–imagine that!). They are conservative (most of them were govt and education administrators) yet we work together because we all see the current conservative administrations educational policies as destructive:

Grandparent Coalition

Peace

I didn’t know you grew up like that too? And here I was thinking you were another intellectual with no contact to everyday problems…I need to read your blog more closely now!!

As far as labels go, it would be hard to have a discussion on ‘Minority Conservatives‘ without the ability to categorize certain beliefs under the conservative flag, or the liberal flag. Granted, my response was a generalization, but an accurate generalization nonetheless.

With that said, I think I understand your point. You want some concrete beliefs that make me a conservative. Things you can wrap your hand around, and argue with. That is certainly a fair thing to ask, so here, let me lay down some of the things that make me a conservative as opposed to a liberal (specifically related to minority issues only, because I am also pro-life as opposed to pro-choice).

Affirmative Action

If it was up to me, affirmative action would be done on economic status as opposed to racial status. I think that this would result in overall the same thing (diverse environment) but without all the negatives of race based affirmative action. You would truly be following a color blind environment (practice what you preach), and would allow for what truly does factor into a persons education (A person who got a 3.8 at Compton High School would have went through alot more to get that 3.8 than a person who got a 4.0 at Beverly Hills High School).

I believe in the brotherhood of men.

I believe the primary reason people in the ghetto are not succeeding is not due to institutional problems,or racism, it is cultural and to some degree socioeconomical. So solutions that try and solve problems in the inner cities need to address those aspects primarily, as opposed to aspects involving racism and institutional problems.

Economics

I believe in economic growth over income inequality.

I am laissez faire because I feel that a more regulated economy hurts primarily the poor.

I believe immigration is a better tool to solving poverty than welfare.

I believe that hand outs, and helping people with out helping themselves breeds a bad culture. Giving people other people’s money is less likely to instill in the beneficiaries a sense of achievement, self-respect, and responsibility than it is a sense of entitlement. And I think Republicans/Conservatives understand this better.

But here, if you want to get this radical conservative to vote Democrat, there is one issue that I value so highly, that I would vote for a Democrat on this single issue if he supported it and the Republican did not. That issue is vouchers.

This is what I wrote in the “MyViews” section of my website.

Education:

Some people think that the most important political topic with regard to education and how it relates to poor people is affirmative action. I disagree strongly. I think it is vouchers, sometimes referred to as school choice. Now, I personally disagree with affirmative action, but that is not the reason I lean conservative on this issue. It is not because I disagree with affirmative action, but because I so strongly believe in School Choice.

School choice means many things to different people. But what I call school choice, and what I believe to be the heart of school choice, is accountability. The key to the success of Capitalism is not the companies it creates, but the inefficient companies it eliminates. And the reason it does that so well is because of competition. Competition has repeatedly shown to be the greatest cause of efficiency than anything else. Under the current school system, if you lived in Compton, California, like I did, you would be forced to send your kid to that cities school system. What if that school system was wrought with gangs, failing teachers, and failing methods of teaching? There is nothing you could do, you would still be forced to send your kid to that school. Too bad for you.

Under vouchers/school choice, all of that changes. Before I get more into vouchers, let me give some background info. Currently in California, the government spends an average of $7,000 a year per student. In some other states, that number could approach 11K/year per student.

If a voucher plan was implemented, what would happen is all public schools would immediately go on a grading system. Those schools that fail for one consecutive year (or whatever time deemed by the Voucher designer), would be given a warning to improve and given a certain amount of time to do it. If that school does not improve in that period of time, vouchers would come into play, being phased in little by little to give the market time to catch up. The government would give the parents the $3,000, or some other fraction of the original amount of money that they had originally sent to that childs public school for that childs behalf. It’s important to note a few things here. One, that money is not coming out of anybodies taxes, it is coming out of money that was already being allocated for that child. Another point, the remainding ($4,000, in this example) goes back into the public schools that are passing to help encourage their success.

Now, what does that parent get to do with that 3k? This where the name voucher comes from, that voucher must be used for some other alternative means of education for that child, of the parents choosing. If the parent wants to send that child to some other school, in some other city, that is ok. If that parent wants to send that child to a private school fine. Shoot, if that parent wants to leave that child in the current school, that is fine too. In other words, the parent gets options that he/she never had before.

It’s important when discussing school choice not to get bogged down into the details of how school choice is implemented. Some voucher programs only allow the parent to send their kid to other public schools, some allow private schools. Some voucher programs give more money to the parents, some give less. Some have tougher grading scales on schools, some have more lenient grading scales. Some allow home schooling as an alternative to public schools, others don’t. Some don’t take the money given to the parents away from the school that fails, others do. The point here is not to get bogged down in the details but to see the overall picture. Vouchers, unlike any plan the liberals suggest, adds accountabilty to a school system that has never seen it before. A school system that has been a monopoly for most of its existance. And competition, just like its track record in economics, does wonders to create efficiency.

And vouchers can only be found under the conservative banner. It makes more sense for them to be under the conservative banner as well, since conservatives are the pro-capitalist, remember. So every problem they encounter, they naturally want to solve that problem by a free market competitive solution. A solution that has proven to work time and time again.

And what exactly is the liberal alternative? That’s easy. It’s not reform, its simply more of the same thing. The liberal solution today, like that of yesterday and yesteryear, is simply more money. Liberals have this tendency to believe that the school system is like a bucket in the corner of the room, the more money you throw at it, the more money may eventually fall into the bucket. The bucket being those students who attend these schools. However, experience has shown that there is very little correlation between more money spent on schools, and better results out of our children. In fact, often times the very opposite is true. The most highly paid schools in the nation (DC for example) have the absolute worse educational record. And the reason is simple, in a monopolized market, you don’t have to improve, the consumer has no alternative. And in education, the consumer is us.

And I must admit, I have never seen an objection to vouchers that can not also be made against Capitalism in general, yet Capitalism works very well. So again, I think on another central issue, conservatives win over liberals.

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I look forward to your feedback.

In response to #32 … you are a good writer, but this constant reliance on simple labels of conservative and liberal makes posts like this useless–where does your reader grab a hold of–how do these labels mask over a multitude of differences within and without these two positions–how does simplistic dualistic mapping of issues frame out any dissenting voices (those that do not claim to be either just liberal or conservative)–how does ahistorical framing of a discussion make any response or critique difficult or impossible… you mention no clear references–how is one to respond other than to engage in pointless carping about liberals and conservatives?

You mentioned you are studying for your GRE… your intellectual opponents in grad school will tear apart this kind of writing (just warning–not trying to be dismisive… but probably comes off that way???).

On the other hand–your personal statement about where you come from and how you developed intellectually was powerful and made me think–thanks. I can relate … I made a strange trip (with no true understanding as it developed–more like just happened to catch that wave as it approached) to where I am, through dropping out of high school, drugs, gangs, and incarceration (no doubt our geographical places made our experiences along these lines very different–yet I would assume there are shared commonalities)… to being clean, in another region, college, grad school, teaching in universities and writing/editing …

Anyways, link below, another conservative, religious (conserving and restoring) thinker I admire (how is this person liberal? how is this person conservative? how does this person provide another example of being both/and, neither/nor, and puts the lie to simplistic dualistic labels of conervative/liberal?):

Why Be An Activist?

I’m not saying we should quit using the concepts of C and L–just that we might be a little more reflective about our usage and challenge the current usage…

No, elenamary, this is not true. In fact, the very opposite is true. I cringe everytime somebody tells me ‘how proud they are of me to have pulled myself out of the ghetto and into where I am now”. I cringe because I know that’s not the truth. I don’t know exactly all the details, but I do know that it wasn’t primarily my doing. One minute I am hanging out with the forgottens in the alley in Compton, the next minute I get my heart broken by a girl who had a huge impact on my life (It’s a strange turn of events how I met her too, I had never been to Church in years, and one day, out of nowhere, my mom practically begged me to go to Church with her, she even offered to buy me Pizza that day and the next day if I went – it was an offer I couldn’t pass up – so I went and we made eye contact as I was driving into the parking lot in my moms car ).

So one day (I’m 17ish), heartbroken (although I am holding it all in, shieett, the way real men deal with pain!!!) sitting at home, what I have been doing for the past couple years since I dropped out of highschool. Decide to register in school…and the rest is history. I remember that the only thing I could do to forget about her was study, hanging out with the fellahs, none of that stuff really stopped me from thinking about her, afterall, that is all the stuff I did while I was with her. So no, I didn’t consciously think to myself ‘if I study I will be able to live like my limousine liberal friends’, it just sorda happened that way. To make a really long story short, that, along with five other crucial events within my life, ended up being the reasons why I am where I am today.

And thinking about all those reasons that got me out of Compton, there is one thing that is common among them. They were all pretty much outside my control. You see, I didn’t consciously choose to get out of Compton, the more accurate picture is that I was pushed out. I don’t know why those things happened to me, and not to the others I grew up with. Probability theorem tells me I am the ‘abnormality’ in a consistent pattern. Part of me says that it must have been because my saintly grandma in Mexico prayed to St. Jude everynight, and me ‘recomiende a su cuida’, but than I remember several of my dead friends had moms/grandmas just as saintly, yet they end up with different results, and wind up crying uncontrollably at their sons funerals, and my grandma/mom never had to go through that, and that idea starts to diminish. I have thought about this for several years now, and to be honest with you, it weighs heavily on my heart. If pressed, I would say that the reason I came out and others didn’t, is that someone up top likes to roll the dice too…and it just happened to roll my number (11). It’s a cruel way to order lifes events, and its one of the first things I am going to ask if I ever get to see him, but its the way things are, and you can’t do anything but ‘roll with it’.

I’ll tell you this much though, I’d give everything I have now, and in the future to go back and have one last night with my friends I grew up with. To roll the dice in front of my house with my friends I grew up with, or the guys from the next street over. I’d give it all to bring back my friends who are dead or forever in prison. But I know there is one thing I can’t reverse, and that is time.

I wish HP would take a couple Chican@ studies (or even urban planning) classes himself. Then he would learn the history of how the city of San Diego has gone to such lengths to keep Barrio Logan isolated from the rest of San Diego and filled with junkyards and factories and the very worst of public schools.

It’s funny that you say this. I remember when I was getting my undergrad I had to take this sociology course. I was still living in Compton at the time, and the teacher asked us to write a paper on any type of subconscious influence society imposes on us. I couldn’t think of anything to write about until one day, after driving home from this girl’s house, it hit me how by some odd order of events, Compton is separated from some of the cities surrounding it. If you leave Compton, and drive down Alondra Blvd, towards lets say Gardena or Carson, you will notice several streets filled with factories and what not that separate the cities from Compton; almost no homes at all between the two cities. Carson and Gardena are not rich areas, but they certainly are much better areas to live in than Compton. I remember thinking that the only way they could have preserved such a difference in culture is to keep Compton at arms length. Anyway, I decided that is what my paper should be on. After a couple days of thinking about it and writing it, I turned it into the teacher.

I didn’t think the paper was all that special, but I remember being approached by a couple professors saying that they got a hold of my paper and that they really liked it; how I have a gift for sociology and if I have ever considered getting into that major. Blah blah blah. I didn’t realize it at the time, but those events had a huge impact on my life. They were the first experiences I had of being valued for my intelligence (I am not saying I am smart, just saying what people thought) as opposed to how tough I was. I had never experienced that sort of praise before, and I probably wouldn’t admit this to many people but I kind of liked it. Looking back, I think that was one of the main things that catapulted me into the study of philosophy/politics/economics, I thought maybe I could add a unique perspective to the debates on the topic (On a side note, my second paper in the class, I took much more seriously, I had always found it extremely annoying to hear rich never-been-in-the-hood people preach about how they ‘just can’t understand how people do what they do in Compton’ or how it ‘is so stupid to be in a gang, to get caught up in that stuff’ as if they are smarter and wiser than those in the ghetto – so I took it upon myself to give a description of how life is growing up in Compton – how the culture through school or just shooting craps with the fellahs in the neighborhood molds you little by little through each year of your life, and how life gets when you enter your teens – how its all a logical step that even the smartest kids can fall into – basically arguing that intelligence has nothing to do with it, its more cultural and socioeconomic than anything – I even interviewed one of the most known killers (used a fake name) in my neighborhood for it – my professor also really liked it, and when I graduated, she, along with my Physics professor nominated me for ‘most outstanding student’ – but it required giving a public speech at my graduation, and being terrified of public speaking – i declined) .

Looking back on it now, I am pretty sure the teacher was liberal, and was trying to awaken a victim mentality (yuck!!) in me and make me another fighter against ’social injustice’ and all that stuff. I am so glad that I didn’t take her up on the offer and jump out of a real science major and into the land of limousine liberals (give me a math problem anyday, over that subjective stuff). I was very young back than (19) and might of not had enough backbone to stay true to who I am (It gives me chills just picturing it, sipping lattes w/ my colleagues talking about how infants aren’t really valuable in themselves only in their connections to the world or how Che had his heart in the right place and how real Communism should be given just one more chance – after all, it’s primarily the poor people that feel the brunt of our mistake anyway – we are safe in these university walls – I get goose bumps all over).

But she did have a huge influence on my life, and I can’t take that away from her. So, for ever in my life, every time I get really angry at a liberal or intellectual, I think about her, and what she did for me, and I calm down and breathe a bit, and realize that they are not all bad.

I hope HP will:

* Continue to be my friend in the decades to come.

No problem there bud. I definitely want to stay in contact with you if not for any other reason but to see just how things will turn out w/ you and your girl. From the little that I have read of her writings, and what you tell me about her, I can already tell that her cultural upbringing and connection to the real world will teach you a lot about life. I am as interested to see how you will change over the years (and move to the right), as I am in how interested you probably are to see how I will change (give it up, there is more of a chance that Barbara Boxer will support a partial birth abortion ban than me ever becoming a libbie).

So, cuándo quieras mi amigo, I’m down to go to the local pub and get a couple bud lights microbrew pale ale w/ you anytime.

There are two necessary parts to succeed in anything. There is the internal element and the external element. The internal element involves the personality traits necessary to succeed. The personality traits that help you stay up late at night when necessary to pass a certain test, the personality traits that teach you a good work ethic necessary to survive and move ahead in any field, and the side that pushes you to keep going and overcome obstacles when they arise. But than there is also the external element. One could work as hard as one can, and have all the personality traits necessary to succeed, but if there are no opportunities because of your race, or if your financial circumstances limits your options, you are also limited in how far you can go economically.

In my opinion, liberals seem to focus on the external forces involved in getting minorities out of the ghetto. They will push for affirmative action, they will push to get more government money for student loans, they will fight to make college cheaper, they will create minority business networks to help promote minority-based businesses. They will put a strong emphasis on the racial barriers to minorities prosperity.

Liberals will also push for social programs that they think will help minorities and depend on the government to implement those programs. They also tend to promote increased government funding of those social programs as the way to solve minority problems.

In other words, liberals’ focus is on the external factors and using the government to implement solutions.

Conservatives, on the other hand, will address the internal factors more. They will stress hard work and dedication, personal responsibility and the need to learn the tools necessary to succeed in life. Conservatives will advocate for crime laws that remove criminals off the streets; they will encourage and assist faith based initiatives that give inner city Churches the tools necessary to solve the economic and cultural problems from the inside. They promote solutions that encourage couples to stay married and help reduce out of wedlock births.

Conservatives will also push for programs that don’t compromise the above beliefs. Conservatives will emphasize free market solutions to the problem of minorities, and tend to shy away from government solutions. They will push for the privatization of social security, thereby giving those who choose to use them the opportunity to take control of their own economic destiny. They will push for non-race specific solutions that will help minority businesses succeed. Things like tax breaks for small business, a reduction in regulations that hamper business growth. Last, but certainly not least, conservatives will push for a free-market solution to tackle the failing problems of our public schools. They will push for vouchers, a solution that gives parents of children in failing schools the economic choice necessary to send their kids to the school of their choice, this in turn indirectly puts much needed pressure on schools to succeed.

In other words, conservatives focus on internal forces and tend to rely on free-market, non-government methods to implement their solutions.

I am not saying that these are mutually exclusive lines, or that supporting one political philosophy implies you don’t support the solutions of the other political philosophy. My point here is to show the difference in emphasis, not in specific applications.

After reading this, one will naturally ask the obvious question, which side is better? If one’s ultimate goal is to get minorities out of the ghetto and towards a prosperous living, which side is better at doing it? I would answer that it depends more on the circumstances of the time than anything else.

To succeed you need both elements. You need the internal and the external. If any one is lacking, you will not be able to succeed.

So both the conservative and the liberal emphasis are necessary. However, I think that depending on the circumstances of the time, one should be emphasized over the other. I agree that there was a time when combating racism was necessary and perhaps affirmative action was needed back then. The country certainly needed to be made aware of the fact that many minorities were not succeeding because of the external limitations imposed on them. But I believe that a lot has changed since then. Racism and the external limitations on minorities are, for the most part, a thing of the past. I am not saying that racism has ceased to exist, only that it doesn’t have the power that it did before. There isn’t enough racism to stop you from succeeding in life. In addition, there is more than enough college funding going around than most people are aware of. Nowadays, there are so many options available to poor people wanting to go to college and there aren’t enough people taking advantage of that. I know a Hispanic female friend of mine that grew up living in a trailer, when she finished high school she won a grant from the Bill Gates foundation that completely paid for her education at USC. The grant paid for her books, education tuition, and gave her money for rent, a computer and transportation. Could you have imagined anything close to that 30 years ago?

I am not arguing that more progress shouldn’t be made with regards to external factors (although I’d disagree with how liberals go about it), but rather that the focus needs to be on internal factors.

Today, the primary problems limiting minorities from getting out of the ghetto are not racial, they are not financial, they are cultural. When you have a high percentage of minorities growing up in single family homes, or a high crime area that hampers economic innovation, or a culture that frowns on academic success, or a public school system that doesn’t give minorities the resources necessary to succeed, the primary problems have ceased to be external, and are now internal.

In other words, minorities now need to hear more Bill Cosby and less Jesse Jackson.

So not only do I believe that the emphasis should be on the internal, but I believe liberals have drifted so far to the external that they have started to hurt minorities.

Liberals’ overemphasis on race leads them to be over sensitive on that issue. I have a very liberal Hispanic friend that I was discussing the problem concerning the lack of Hispanics in the sciences, something that is of particular concern to me. And it was like pulling teeth to get her to even admit there is a problem, as if my bringing it up was the result of some racism on my part. I could only imagine what her response would have been if I had been a white person, as opposed to Hispanic. Many times, if you talk to a liberal minority and you happen to be white, many of them will not even listen to what you have to say, simply because you are white or don’t have the same poverty upbringing that they have. In addition, liberals have become so sensitive on racial issues that it becomes very difficult to even talk about cultural problems without the fear of being branded a racist.

In addition, liberals’ overemphasis on race issues leads them to be very divisive – emphasizing the difference among Americans instead of the similarities. For example, Mexican-American minorities will quibble endlessly about the proper term that defines us, is it Latino? Is it Hispanic? Or, is it even Chicano? Some take this argument so seriously that they have publically stated that they will not even view or address my solution to failing public schools (vouchers) because I have decided to call myself Hispanic. When your ideology drives you to stress the importance of whether to call yourself a Hispanic over the problem of failing schools, I think it’s fair to say you need to re-evaluate your priorities.

Furthermore, contrary to common belief among liberals, social programs don’t have the wonderful track record that liberals seem to think they do. Some argue that using the government to promote social programs only divides and actually makes matters worse.

Than there is the belief that social programs when done through government do not come free. They have trade offs like everything else in economics. The bigger you make government, the more you tax citizens, the less efficient the economy runs, and the less economic mobility is available to those at the bottom.

Maybe I am lucky to have entered politics at such a young age. To have entered politics without experiencing the civil rights era of the 1960’s and 70’s. To have only read about the great Martin Luther King Jr, the great civil rights fighters of that time instead of going through the struggles with them. Maybe the lack of personal experience in that area has allowed me to enter politics with no historical bias, only judging what I see now.

my comment about the “smoke and mirrors” was in jest.

as for the statement about the new trend of minority conservatives… I’m just saying the press (both mainstream and alternative) these days are acting as if minority conservatives are something new under the sun, when anyone that takes a passing interest in history would learn that minority groups in their struggles to “fit in” or “achieve” have often internalized the conservative values of the mainstream society–even bringing them to a new level.

I have no ideal if these new CMs represent a new philosophy/politics/worldview… but they are not “originating” as a context-free new force at this point in time–there is a long tradition and they sound very similar to white conservatives (in my very partial and incomplete readings/discussions)?

Great quote from the Black Pundit–he wiffed big time on that one. Who came up with their name first: the Hispanic Pundit or the Black Pundit?

Thivai … marxism, existentialism, buddhism, yoga (all ill-formed and misunderstood–luckily the middle two thrive on that)