No Thanks to Affirmative Action
By Linda Chavez

Back in 1974, when I was part of the Democratic staff of the House Judiciary Committee, I learned that Senator Alan Cranston, a liberal Californian, was about to lose the only Mexican American on his staff, a young lawyer with whom I was friendly. Outside of the New Mexico delegation there were probably fewer than a dozen Mexican American professionals employed throughout Congress at that time, and most of us knew each other, at least casually.

I decided to apply for the legislative assistant slot being vacated in Cranston's office, assuming I'd have an excellent shot at it with two-plus years of experience in civil rights enforcement with a Judiciary subcommittee, working for a California congressman. I sent over a copy of my résumé and several samples of my writing and soon received a call from Cranston's administrative assistant, Roy Greeneway.

The staff of powerful United States senators are powers themselves, often making the crucial decisions about what goes into legislation and guiding senators how to vote on critical bills. Lobbyists and constituents usually make their cases to congressional staff, many of who develop huge egos as a result. Greeneway struck me as a prime example of this type. Gruff and overweight, he sat behind his desk in Cranston's office like a pasha receiving tribute from his underlings.

I came into the interview confident and prepared. My only drawback was that I was no longer a California resident, though I had maintained my voting residency there through the 1972 elections, voting absentee. Members of Congress usually preferred to hire staff from their home states, in part because they were more likely to understand local issues but also as a form of patronage. But having previously lived in California, I wasn't too worried that my residency would be held against me. Greeneway spent time carefully looking through the material I gave him.

"Who edits your writing?" he finally asked, looking up from one of the subcommittee reports I had authored.

"No one edits my writing. I edit the writing of other members of the staff. That's why I was hired. As a writer, I mean. The general counsel thought the committee needed someone who could take the lawyers' technical writing and turn it into plain English," I said, smiling pleasantly so as not to seem defensive.

"What about this?" he said, his eyes narrowing. He handed me a copy of a speech Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter Rodino delivered on the House floor when he cast his vote against Gerald Ford for vice president to replace Spiro Agnew, who had resigned in disgrace.

"I wrote it in close consultation with Mr. Rodino," I said. "The Chairman is very particular about his speeches. He has certain phrases he likes to use. We went through several drafts on this speech because it was so momentous. He had voted to report out Ford's name from the committee, but then he believed he had an obligation to his own constituents to oppose it on the floor when he was acting as an individual congressman, not as committee chairman," I said, trying to explain the elaborate reasoning Rodino had been so adamant that I capture in the speech.

"So then this speech was edited," Greeneway said, jumping on what he perceived as an inconsistency in what I had told him.

"I would say it was a collaborative process," I answered.

"It has been my experience that Mexican Americans have difficulty writing. The fellow who was in this job before couldn't write worth a damn," he added, to my amazement.

"As you can see, I was an English major. I taught literature and composition in graduate school. I have no difficulty writing." I tried not to sound angry, but my blood was boiling, and I could feel my face flushing.

"Let me think about it. I'll get back to you in a couple days," he said.

What is it with these liberals?, I thought as I left the office. They are eager to hire minorities, but they apparently don't think much of their skills. What they don't like is a minority who doesn't fit their neat little stereotypes. In Greeneway's mind, a well-spoken Mexican American who could actually write a coherent paragraph in English was automatically suspect.

When Greeneway didn't call after a couple of weeks, I called him. "Is there anybody at the committee who can verify that you wrote this material," he asked me.

I couldn't believe my ears. He was still at it.

"You can call Alan Parker," the general counsel of the subcommittee I'd worked for. "Or, better yet, Jerry Zeifman. He's the one who hired me in the first place," I added, knowing that Zeifman's name would carry some weight, since he was currently one of the most important people on Capitol Hill, as general counsel of the full House Judiciary Committee during the Nixon impeachment process.

But Greeneway never called either man, and I didn't get the job. I suspect that it was easier for him to believe that I was lying to him than to accept that someone with my background could actually string two sentences together. I was beginning to think that affirmative action was poisonous for me.

When I later left the Judiciary Committee for a job as a lobbyist for the National Education Association, I became convinced that affirmative action was a bad idea. I lasted less than a year at the NEA, feeling pigeonholed the entire time. Although I initially thought I had been hired because of my Capitol Hill experience, it became obvious on my first day at work that the NEA needed me to round out their "rainbow lobby." Of the five lobbyists on staff, one was black, one was American Indian, two were white men, and I provided them with a "two-fer," filling affirmative action slots as both a woman and a Mexican American.

The NEA prided itself on its racial, ethnic, and gender quotas. The bylaws of the organization mandated that its elected leaders mirror the racial composition of the population, and that half the elected slots go to women. Race, ethnicity, and sex were destiny at the NEA; everyone was defined in terms of his or her group. Consequently, they assigned me to attend the NEA's Chicano caucus meetings and to follow civil rights legislation--a responsibility I shared with my black and Indian colleagues--plus bilingual education.

I found the whole thing offensive--if not downright illegal. The civil rights laws themselves forbade employers to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, national origin, color, or religion. They didn't say anything about guaranteeing a certain number of slots to minorities or women. In fact, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act expressly said that nothing in the law should be interpreted "to require preferences" on the basis of race or sex. Hubert Humphrey, the chief sponsor of the act, had promised that if anyone could find "any language which provides that an employer will have to hire on the basis of percentage or quota related to color, race, religion, or national origin, I will start eating the pages one after another, because it is not in there."

Yet the supporters of affirmative action everywhere seemed to believe that the only way to eliminate racial discrimination against blacks, Latinos, and women was to discriminate against white men. By 1975, racial, ethnic, and gender preferences were pervasive in public employment, dictating the hiring of police officers, firefighters, and teachers, and setting aside a certain percentage of government work for minority firms in public contracting. Meanwhile, colleges and universities routinely admitted minority students under less stringent requirements than white students, and gave overwhelming preference to women in many fields. I found the trend troubling.

My first doubts had crept in just a few years earlier, while I was teaching in affirmative action programs myself at UCLA and the University of Colorado at Boulder. A series of shocking experiences had convinced me first hand that affirmative action was having devastating effects on academic standards and race relations. I learned, to my surprise, that the double standards these programs erect also badly hurt the intended beneficiaries--encouraging them to wallow in self-pity rather than improving their skills, and casting a pall on the qualifications of all minorities and women, even those who are quite talented. And of course affirmative action programs cause deep resentment among those denied jobs, promotions, or admission to college because they happen to be white or male.

After my years of teaching and working in politics, I now believed fervently that no one should be discriminated against because of his or her color or sex--and that included white males. I also knew that affirmative action programs were creating ugly new prejudices and barriers to advancement for blacks, Latinos, and women. It was clear to me that preferential treatment was simply perpetuating the skills gap between whites and minorities and promoting racial, ethnic, and sex stereotyping. But I was beginning to despair that I would ever find any job where a liberal-minded employer shared my hard-won views.

This is adapted from Linda Chavez's forthcoming autobiography An Unlikely Conservative (Basic Books), which catalogues her migration from left to right on the political spectrum.