"After all that Richard Nixon had written about how hard work wins the day in America, finally it was Nixon who arranged for me to bypass the old rules. Through the agency of affirmative action, akin to those pivotal narrative devices in Victorian fictions, I had, suddenly, a powerful father in America, like Old Man Kennedy. I had, in short, found a way to cheat. The saddest part of the story is that Nixon was willing to disown his own myth for political expediency. It would be the working-class white kid—the sort he had been—who would end up paying the price of affirmative action, not Kennedys. Affirmative action defined a “minority” in a numerical rather than a cultural sense. And since white males were already numerically “represented” in the boardroom, as at Harvard, the Appalachian white kid could not qualify as a minority. And since brown and black faces were “underrepresented,” those least disadvantaged brown and black Americans, like me, were able to claim the prize of admission and no one questioned our progress."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Academics from the United StatesJournalists from the United StatesMemoirists from the United StatesPeople from San FranciscoHispanic Americans
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Rodriguez
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Richard Rodriguez
118 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Richard Rodriguez →
Related Quotes
"You know what futurists and online-ists and cut-out-the-middle-man-ists and Davos-ists and deconstructionists of ever…"
"The genius of American culture and its integrity comes from fidelity to the light. Plain as day, we say. Happy as the…"
"Mexico is a nineteenth-century country arranged for gaslight. Once brought into the harsh light of the twentieth-cent…"
"As you see yourself, I once saw myself; as you see me now, you will be seen."
"His name was William Saroyan. He was the first writer I fell in love with, boyishly in love. I was held by his unaffe…"
"Of all the institutions in their lives, only the Catholic Church has seemed aware of the fact that my mother and fath…"
"My parents seem to me possessed of great dignity. An aristocratic reserve. Like the very rich who live behind tall wa…"
"Once upon a time, I was a ‘socially disadvantaged’ child. An enchantedly happy child. Mine was a childhood of intense…"
"I grew up victim to a disabling confusion. As I grew fluent in English, I no longer could speak Spanish with confidence."
"‘Why?’ My mother’s question hangs in the still air of memory. The loneliness I have felt many mornings, however, has …"