How my Mom Learned about the Advantages of Diversity

Shortly after my mother’s death, sorting through her papers, I came upon a curious photo taken on Government Street in Victoria. The picture offered a lesson in perspective.

The shot (alas, lost) showed a middle-aged white woman with cameras strapped around her neck, along with a multiracial cast of teenagers. The black kids had billowing Afro hair styles. All were laughing.

My mom was doing a Seattle Times magazine piece on a diversity project. Western Washington State College, as it was then known, had recruited a group of promising but underachieving kids from poor families. They were given a shot at college. They were first put through a summer-long intellectual boot camp, where study habits had to be instilled, reading skills honed. There were doubts, with one prof calling them  “the Bandits.”

They persevered and sparkled. The trip to Victoria was a reward, and my mother tagged along. The group ventured into a pricey clothing store to look at Cowichan sweaters. A snooty sales manager approached and wanted to know, “What can I do to help you?” A Latino kid, in leather jacket, pointed to my mother and replied, “Ask our mother.” The guy did a double take. The group piled out onto the sidewalk and doubled up laughing. Beneath the mirth, however, the kids changed the perspectives of my conservative parent.

My mother garnered a close-up appreciation of affirmative action. Not as a racial quota system, but as a way to provide opportunity that would otherwise be lost. Given a rung, the kids could climb the ladder to the American dream. With diversity, equity, and inclusion now treated as dirty words, here’s a rundown of the benefits:

Talent

Society gets full benefit from the brains of those, then and now, who were long the victims of derision, discrimination, and racism.

The first African American to edit the Harvard Law Review went on to be President of the United States. The son of Caribbean immigrants chaired the Joint Chiefs of Staff and went on to become Secretary of State. The kid down the hall in my college dorm would eventually edit the Chicago Tribune editorial page.

Fulfillment

Talented people fulfill potential to the extent of their abilities. They are not held back by race, gender, sexual preference, or economic hardship.

My mother, a Time-Life correspondent, was case in point. She plied Sports Illustrated with proposed pieces on outdoor sports. They responded by sending big-name shooters out rather than trusting her work. She seethed, on New York trip, at being honored as a “scout.”

Motivation

The Western program gave “the Bandits” a path up and out from poverty and dreary upbringings. They expressed themselves in physical appearance but were poor. Black, white, and Latino alike, they needed income to buy stuff.

I once took a campaign trip with then-Vice President George H.W. Bush on a Head Start visit in Newark. It was at the height of the crack epidemic. Bush gave a sermonette on evils of drug dealing. Our host explained that, in a ghetto, drug dealing was the quickest and sometimes only source of income. 

The assassination of Charlie Kirk has given the right a martyr. Horrible as was the killing, however, we ought remember Kirk’s rap on race. He warned of “the ever increasing amount of black crime” and declared “by the age of 33, half of all black males have been arrested and not enough of them have been arrested.” And Kirk denounced civil-rights legislation of the 1960s. Bluntly put, Turning Point USA is better labeled Turning Back USA. We need to give poor kids a boost regardless of race or ethnicity.

Fear is becoming the central motivator in our politics. The country is fearfully divided. We are retreating from past advances. We are burdened with an authoritarian president pouring salt into social wounds as he pursues vengeance.

The spirited summer immersion at Western awakened the social conscience in my mother. I can only hope that the better angels of America’s national character remain with us. At present, however, we are experiencing the darker side of the American dream.

This article also appears in Cascadia Advocate.