Affirmative Action and the Handicap of White Privilege

by Irene Daniel

Last week amidst the 3-ring circus that was our congress at work, the Supreme Court was also at work, hearing yet another argument on the whys and wherefores of affirmative action in college admissions. Instead of discussing the legal arguments and historic precedents, I would like to share my experience of affirmative action and its greatest benefit to me – the revelation of the handicap of white privilege.

In the Spring of 1987, I was admitted to the UCLA College of Law for the upcoming fall semester. In February of that year, I had flown from Phoenix to LAX in order to interview with the UCLA La Raza Law Students Association (La Raza) on the campus of the law school. This story is very important because, you see, that was the last year that UCLA had a real affirmative action program that enabled an inclusive and collaborative admissions process. RIP.

Back in the day, a mere 26 years ago, affirmative meant something positive and, well, affirmative; instead of the dreaded image of the need to lower the rope for the “least of these,” in order to give “them” an unearned opportunity. This inaccurate and unjust narrative of the basis of affirmative action is yet another example of a whitewashed American tale. The convenient spin of the lowering of standards in order to allow those in who are “less qualified” is just more white revisionist history.

For the truth is that nobody lowered the rope for me.  At the time of my interview with 2 La Raza students, I was a single mother with a full-time job and carrying a full load of credits at Arizona State University. I was a little nervous in my interview because I had at that time very little in the way of extra-curricular activities or activist credentials that would deem me a committed Chicana. Fortunately, that wasn’t really what the Latino student leadership at the UCLA School of Law were looking for. They weren’t looking for activists. They were looking for good students, which I was; and who weren’t using the Latino affirmative action route as an angle, while growing up essentially white middle-class, which I definitely was not. They were looking for someone authentically “one of us.”

Then, they could take that confidence in my application to the law school and lobby on my behalf to the entire admissions committee. That’s right. They had a voice at the table, which is really what Civil Rights and affirmative action are all about. The Black Law Students’ Association (BALSA) and the Asian and Pacific Islanders Students’ Association (APILSA) also had a vote on the admissions committee; and they too, recruited from among the entire applicant pool, and advocated for those whom they wanted to join them at the law school.

The reason those votes on the committee were so important in creating a dynamic student body is because I had people in that room that were actually like me – Mexican, poor, smart. They recognized in me an authenticity that they knew would be a contribution to the Latino law students, as well as to the legal community in general in the future. And more than that, they saw me as I was; not as an unknown risk with decent numbers (GPA & LSAT score), although not the best.

My fellow La Raza alums knew for themselves that there was more to me than test scores because they too had to work and go to school, they too had to care for children or aging family members, they too had much more on their plate during their college years than studying and going to football games. And mostly, they too had been underestimated by white people all their lives. That is how they recognized all that I had overcome with my own talents and resourcefulness; and that is why they fought for me. They fought for me because they knew that, far from being “less qualified,” I made it there more on my own merit than those who were admitted because their families wrote checks.

And that is the handicap of white privilege. I needed people like me in that room to educate the admissions officers about just how hard it is for a single mother with a full-time job to consistently make the Dean’s List. Moreover, those of us who are not white are made aware every day that we are on the outside looking in, and that this obstacle is not one recognizable by white people, especially conservative white people.

While it is true that there are many white and poor students whose experience is similar to mine,  whiteness and maleness are still big advantages in a world that continues to be dominated by white males, and thus their potential for upward mobility is still greater than those who are not white and not male. Accordingly, the group of persons most greatly advantaged by affirmative action programs have overwhelmingly been white women. While they may have begun with the same limited material resources, the whiteness of their skin gives an unearned credibility with respect to their perceived abilities. This fact is neither evil nor, in most cases deliberate; but a natural consequence of centuries of government-sponsored policies that recognized the false superiority of white skin.

So in reality, affirmative action is necessary in order to balance this inequity and to focus attention on true merit, rather than skin color. And true merit is present in many ways that a white male dominated society is, as of yet, unwilling and/or unable to recognize in those of us who are not white, not male and not wealthy.

When I help students write personal statements for college admission I always remind them that the admissions process is more a process of elimination, than it is a process of selection. So, you see, to a middle-class white person, it is easy to eliminate people by using mere numbers in a system historically designed by and for the benefit of only white people, especially white men. For those of us who are not white, we know how to see beyond these instruments of a long-institutionalized white supremacy, whether consciously or subliminally, to reveal the depths of the efforts and rewards of overcoming such obstacles. Those La Raza advocates knew me and recognized my skill and ability, whereas the average admissions officer might see me as mediocre.

And the paradox is this:  white people can succeed in mediocrity; nonwhites usually need to be much better just to reach the same starting gate. I remember many occasions in which I was completely stunned at how little my white counterparts knew about my world: paying bills, caring for children, cleaning house, working for a living. And there was a lot of resentment on campus among the wealthy and white towards us “diversity students;” a sense of lowering standards.

But, let’s put it this way:  suppose I had been switched at birth with a wealthy New Yorker baby. Suppose this wealthy white man had instead grown up poor, female and Mexican, raised by a single mom. And suppose that I had been raised with all the privileges money could buy. Who would have made it to UCLA Law School in that instance?

I’m sure I would have made it, for I have already demonstrated that I could accomplish this goal under much harsher circumstances. The real question is, would our white prep school friend have made it? Who had the tougher row to hoe?

So when people talk about affirmative action giving a pass to the “less qualified,” I see it as another example of the handicap of white privilege.