Open your eyes to anti-affirmative action rhetoric

Published: Friday, May 12, 1995

Juan Alvarado

Okay, here's the deal. My friend Tia told me her theory about getting what she wants in life. She called it the catsup theory and it goes something like this: If, hypothetically, you had a big blob of catsup hanging 39,000 feet up in the air, if a plane flew by and couldn't avoid the blob, some of that catsup would inevitably get stuck to the plane.

I didn't get it at first either, so I asked her to explain. She said that when she wants something, she becomes like that blob of catsup. She makes herself present and unavoidable to the thing she wants. Anyone who endures this with her comes out of it like the plane, no major damage, but just a piece of her sticking to them.

Why am I even bringing this up? Well, to be honest, partly because she told me that theory just so she could get mentioned in one of my columns. Mainly I'm bring it up because I've noticed a lot of people who believe in this theory without even knowing about it.

I'm talking about all the recent articles about affirmative action. It hasn't been a real national issue for years and years sure, it has come in and out of the local spotlight but not since affirmative action began has the national debate been this active. Now, all of a sudden, it's a hot topic.

Is it just me or does anyone else feel like they've got catsup on their face? Someone decided that this issue should surface right now, just in time for the primaries, and that the issue should stay in the spotlight all the way to the 1996 elections. It's definitely not a coincidence it's actually more like a smoke screen. If people aren't careful, other, more relevant issues might be glossed over while we debate this one.

The fact is that the issue is here, especially in California where we will soon face a ballot measure called the California Civil Rights Initiative. And since a debate has at least two sides, I should tell you where I stand on affirmative action so you can know my personal biases.

I am attending UCLA today because of affirmative action. I am by no means underqualified to be here, but if the program did not exist I would be attending college somewhere else. In high school, I had a 2.68 GPA and a 1240 SAT (550 verbal, 690 math). I scored exactly the required 1650 on the achievement tests, fulfilled the University of California's A-F admissions requirements and was enrolled in all the honors and Advanced Placement courses at my school.

Here's the supplemental information. I am a Mexican American from a small, poor neighborhood and school district, and a school that is definitely underrepresented (only one student was admitted to UCLA the year before me, one the year before that and I was the sole admit my year). I was in the band, the academic team and Mathematics Engineering Science Achievement, where I was named most outstanding senior for my school.

Well, that's what the admissions people had to go on when looking at my application. If there were no affirmative action programs I would have never gotten in. My GPA alone would have disqualified me because so many applicants have 3.5s or better. I figure that since I was about average in academic criteria, the supplemental information really helped to get me in.

The point I want to make here is that if it weren't for affirmative action programs, lots of you reading this would not be here either. Enough applicants come in every year with a 3.5 or better, or 1100 or better on the SATs, that anyone under could kiss their chances goodbye.

Sixty percent of UCLA students are admitted on purely academic statistics and the other 40 percent are admitted based on a combination of academics and supplemental criteria. Affirmative action is not just about ethnic minorities, it's about balancing our society so the school won't be filled with only rich white males like it was before the programs were created.

Even if every minority student was admitted to UCLA through affirmative action, we still represent only about 20 percent of the school's population. That leaves 80 percent of admits who are non-minority. Now that is a big if, and as much as you may not want to believe it, a good percentage of minorities are admitted on purely academic criteria. So that makes the percentage of nonminority affirmative action admits even larger.

So now, let's think about these cries of "reverse discrimination" for a second. Percentage-wise, it is more likely that the person who takes the spot of a 4.6 GPA candidate is a nonminority from a disadvantaged background. Maybe they had to work all through high school and couldn't spare enough time to study. Maybe they had to worry more about living another day than doing more homework.

I've known students like this. You are out there, you know who you are and you are here at UCLA because of affirmative action. Something to think about when you are asked where you stand on the issue.

So what about the California Civil Rights Initiative? The two supposedly apolitical college professors who authored the initiative are anything but apolitical. They would like you to believe the proposition was inspired by their desire to take the civil rights movement to its next logical step by removing all mentions of race from California hiring and contract granting practices.

Tom Wood, one of the two professors who authored the initiative, has an axe to grind with affirmative action. He was told after a job interview that he would "walk right in if he were the right gender," and the job was given to a woman. What he doesn't emphasize, however, is that he wasn't offered lots of jobs, and affirmative action is not to blame for those. In fact, in a 20-year span since he got a Ph.D. he has landed a grand total of three temporary posts from dozens of attempts. In my opinion, if he were a good professor, those temporary positions would have become more permanent. Most likely, it is easier for him to blame affirmative action and be bitter than to face that simple fact.

The other author, Glynn Custred, is actually an employed professor. He claims he has no axe to grind, but feels for all those out there that have endured what his friend Tom has. A conservative activist, Custred does all he can to turn back efforts to open institutions of education to people of color. In 1989, he co-founded the California Association of Scholars, an organization that lobbies to relax standards defining racial and sexual harassment. In 1992, Custred brought on Wood as executive director of the organization. The group then worked to block the adoption of a policy statement by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges that called for addressing the issue of preparing students to work in a multiethnic, heterogeneous society.

My mission in writing this column is to open your eyes to the hypocrisy of most of the anti-affirmative action rhetoric going around.

It's not about civil rights, it's about anger, resentment and racism. I'm asking you as intelligent people to really think about the issue of affirmative action, where it came from, what it's doing, and what it has done.

Alvarado is a fifth-year computer science and engineering student. His columns appear on alternate Fridays.