I’m writing this on a Thursday. I woke up late this morning and
missed my
first class of the semester. The class was Trusts and Estates (yawn),
but
the professor is really good, so I wish I’d made it. Semester? Trusts
and
Estates? Yes, I am a law student. But I was an undergrad, not long ago.
And in that other life, I was also a columnist. How that life
transmuted
into this one is a fascinating story. What follows is a small chapter.
Once upon a time (fall of 1995), I moved back into the dorms for my
junior year. Inciting this move was my inability to cook, my lack of
friends and a renewed optimism about the future. I met a lot of cool
people
that fall. One of them was named Mike. We lived on the same floor and
got
along great. Both of us grew up in Orange County and shared an interest
in
politics. We even shared the same last name.
He started working as a news reporter for the campus paper, the
Daily
Californian. Among his assignments was to cover a College Republicans
meeting where an obscure professor from a state college — I forget his
name
— was to speak. Mike invited me to come along, because this guy was
going
to talk about some initiative on next year’s ballot.
Although the College Republicans claimed to be the largest club on
campus
(actual honors went to CalPIRG), the meeting was very small — 15
people at
most. The guy starts talking about his initiative, the California Civil
Rights Initiative, or CCRI. Like many initiatives, its title was not
only
misleading but suggests the opposite of what it actually does. It
wanted to
get rid of programs and policies that helped African Americans, Latinos
and
other underrepresented minorities. It wanted to end affirmative action.
Very few Californians paid any attention to it, as the minuscule
turnout
showed. Ending affirmative action was not big on most Californians’
minds.
If they had doubts, or felt it hurt their chances of advancement, they
kept
it to themselves. Because, in their heart of hearts, they knew that it
helped those who had been kept down for so long.
Then Ward Connerly stepped into the fray. Ward Connerly was a Regent
of the
University of California. He persuaded the Regents to end affirmative
action in the UC system, against the wishes of all nine university
chancellors. Then he took over the reins of the moribund CCRI campaign
—
now Proposition 209 — and drove it to victory in November 1996. The
rest,
they say, is history.
One other thing: he was black. Because he was black, he provided
cover for
whites to speak out against affirmative action. Because he was black,
all
of a sudden every other prominent black voice was drowned out. Because
he
was black, it was alright to say racially questionable things. This was
the
mid-1990s, with the “Bell Curve” theories of racial superiority, Newt
Gingrich’s Contract with America, and the election of Trent Lott as
Senate
majority leader.
The winds were changing, but it took active partisanship. Regents
are
trustees.
They have a obligation not to engage in politics. Ward Connerly broke
that
rule. He even took his mission to Washington State and killed
affirmative
action there.
I always wondered why he skipped Oregon. Until I got here. There are
so
few minorities on this campus. My friend Shannon said to me today,
“I’m
going to celebrate Martin Luther King holiday with the two blacks that
go
here.” She was only half-kidding. And yet, and yet… this is a
friendly
environment if one can acclimate to the homogeneity. I remember when
Orange
County was once like this. Only the kids don’t taunt you anymore.
They’ve
learned that differences aren’t to be feared or loathed or ridiculed,
but
respected, appreciated and, maybe, loved. A community that lacks
diversity
of peoples can still learn the same profound lessons if they explore
and
open themselves to worlds different from theirs. It’s just harder to
achieve.
Critics of affirmative action say that it just focuses on numbers.
But
skipping Oregon told me that numbers were all that mattered to them.
And
the number said that Washington had considerably more minority students
than
Oregon. After all, if it was about justice or based on principle,
wouldn’t those critics take on Oregon’s affirmative action system? How
many
times Ward Connerly must have flown over Eugene, at California
taxpayer’s
expense, on his way to do his masters’ bidding in Washington. Land in
Eugene? Not worth it — the mission was to protect white middle-class
enrollment. And white enrollment was undisturbed in the Willamette
Valley.
There is something incongruous about voting on affirmative action.
It’s
about helping minorities — often racial and ethnic minorities, but
also
women, who have made great strides through affirmative action programs.
Not
to mention people who live in rural areas, or who come from poor
families,
or who are disabled. Voting is about majority rule — not just
demographic
majorities, but power majorities — those who have more money, are more
privileged, have better-financed political campaigns. Why would they
ever
protect minority rights?
The fact that affirmative action lasted as long as it did is a
testament to the wisdom and sense of justice that most Americans
shared, and
most Oregonians still do. I almost feel bad for having unleashed this
sorry
saga (imported from California, of course) onto relatively innocent and
wholesome minds.
We may be witnessing the twilight of that sense of justice. Trent
Lott may
have fallen, but the South has risen again. George W. Bush just
denounced
the University of Michigan’s admissions plan as “unfair” — a word that
more
accurately describes his admission to Yale Business School on his
daddy’s
record as former Congressman, oil tycoon and then-envoy to China.
Incidentally, the respondent in the affirmative action case before the
Supreme Court is former U-M President Lee Bollinger, who graduated from
the
University of Oregon, became a noted law professor and law school dean,
and
almost Harvard president. The last title he lost to Lawrence Summers,
who
benefitted from the affirmative action of privilege (he graduated from
Harvard). Larry Summers, a former World Bank economist who once
declared that Third World countries were “underpolluted,” went on to
alienate Cornel West, of the Afro-American Studies Department, with
unfounded claims of grade inflation and producing rap music on company
time.
The racial (and racist) overtones of Summers is too much to bear. I
wonder
if Bush and Summers suffer from a case of inverse projection — the
unfair
privileges accorded to them in life, they ascribe to a class of people
who
have much less than you or I do.
OK. That’s the end of my sermon, for now. I don’t write nearly as
often as
I should. So when it rains, I really pour it on.
The last time it rained, so to speak, was the summer of 1996. I had
applied
for a columnist’s position in 1995, as a humorist of sorts. Yeah, I
know.
What was I thinking? Well, most columns then were humor columns. Or
more
accurately, they were “what I ate for breakfast today” columns. The
Daily
Emerald is refreshingly free of such narcissism. So, anyway, I couldn’t
pass for a narcissist. (So why am I starting a
blog, you ask? Good
question.)
Another reason, besides a lack of comedy or self-absorption, was the
opinion
page editor. Let’s just say his name was a homophone for “baloney.” (I
kid
you not.) That described a lot of his columns, which railed against
affirmative action, women’s lib — you’ve known the type and font. I
wrote
several responses to his columns, which of course he never published.
To
the Emerald’s credit, it printed the letters from the Commentator guy
and
the “sixth-year physics student.” Based on my experience, Pat, they
would
never do the same for you.
Other editors that year played the same game. Their opinion
mattered. No
one else’s. Not even their own colleagues. They wrote editorials
against
affirmative action time and time again. It was widely reported, since
Berkeley had been a symbol of progressive American culture for a
generation.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the editorial board vote was
6-4.
6-4? Why would you impose your views repeatedly when it divides your
own
board and stirs most of the writing staff and support staff to sign
letters
opposing the editorial? The Daily Emerald newsroom seems so collegial
to
me. The editorial board wouldn’t take a vehement editorial position if
it
was so closely divided on a sensitive issue — would it?
Some of them were just self-satisfied in their privilege. Others
were
anti-Asian (the campus was 40 percent Asian-American, which caused the
squeeze on
white enrollment more than anything else) — one editor, a
6-foot-7-inch
guy, had
an ongoing row with his Korean girlfriend’s brother (and his Asian
fraternity mates). But most of the leaders of the cabal were simply
anti-Berkeley. The way some folks you know are anti-Eugene.
But anyway… in April of 1996, I applied again for a columnist
spot. I
wrote two sample columns, one on the Communications Decency Act/Telecom
Bill, and one on the child of immigrants experience. And I got it…
for the
summer. I wrote five columns. There’s no need to discuss them. They’re
products of a younger me. If you want to read them, just type
“dailycal”
and “philip huang” into Google and they will pop up. You may even see
one
on the CDA — which they published on a slow news day on April 30.
I couldn’t have started my writing career without Rachel. She was my
girlfriend then, and she made sure that I finished writing those two
columns
and sent them in. She dragged me out of bed — boy was I lazy — and
sat me
down at the computer. She did this even though she was applying, too.
She
didn’t get one of the other columnist spots, but she wrote for the
paper at
NYU when she started school there that fall. That must be karma. Now
she
writes erotic stories — if you read them you probably know her
already.
Breaking up wasn’t something I had to regret — we were far apart
and
nothing
could be done, or would be done, anytime soon. But I wonder about that
ameliorating influence on my writing she had — or on my writing ethic,
actually. Though she was a writer herself, it was more her emotional
support and genuine interest, rather than mere editorial assistance,
that
breathed life into this writer. That’s exactly what I needed.
More than five years passed before I found it again.