Years at Edison taught me true value of diversity

Dara E. Purvis

Originally published by The Fresno Bee, July 19, 2003.

Last Monday, as soon as I arrived in my office at the Department of Justice in Washington, I loaded CNN's webpage on my computer. For the next hour and a half, I attempted to get my work done while reloading the page every five minutes, looking for breaking developments. A short distance away, a momentous decision regarding the future of education in America was going to be released.

I am speaking, of course, of the affirmative action cases announced last week: one striking down the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions policy, and one upholding the University of Michigan Law School's plan. Despite the disparate outcomes, the body of the decisions made one thing clear: affirmative action, aimed at ensuring a diversity of student bodies, is a compelling government interest. The undergraduate admissions policy was struck down not as a rejection of affirmative action, but because a majority of the Justices decided that the policy itself, adding 20 points on a 150-point scale for several qualities including race, was not narrowly tailored. The law school's plan, a much more fluid consideration, was judged as narrowly tailored, and thus was upheld.

My interest in the cases is not just because I plan to study law, nor because I am a self-admitting political wonk, nor because working for the government this summer has made me more attuned to the events happening in this one-industry town, although all of those factors undoubtedly contribute. In addition to those elements, however, my interest in affirmative action has a more personal tone.

I spent all of my childhood life, save a few months in Northern California, in Fresno, and attended Edison High School. Edison was not the typical high school experience. It's one of the most diverse schools in Fresno County-a recent report I found online detailing the demographics of Edison's students informed me that Caucasian students are actually one of the smallest ethnic groups, with greater numbers of Asian, Hispanic, and African-American students. My experience in high school, therefore, has given me an intimate idea of what exactly educational diversity can mean.

Perhaps the best realization of exactly how special my experiences at Edison were came from comparing my memories of high school with other students at college. At the University of Southern California, the geographical diversity of my fellow students meant that I heard about some very different types of schools. One of my roommates was one of literally a handful of African-American students at her school in Ohio. She would laughingly recall the times in history class when teachers called on her to give her personal reaction to the legacy of slavery in America-as she referred to it, being called upon to give "the black experience." This is not to say that the teacher's efforts were ill-intentioned-but the thought of having one student to explain "the black experience" to the rest of the class would not have been possible at Edison.

That, I suppose, is the difference between tokenism and true diversity; the "critical number" of minority students that the University of Michigan's law school tries to achieve in each entering class. There is no one "black experience" to be taught to those of different backgrounds, but it also cannot be denied that there is something qualitatively different about growing up black as opposed to white. That difference of perspective brings unique things to the classroom, unique points of view that enrich everyone's educational experience. And only by having a significant number of different points of view can we as students understand not only the differences between racial experiences in American society, but the differences within those racial experiences as well.

My experience at Edison, therefore, informs my opinion of affirmative action to this day. Because of my experiences during high school, diversity is not an abstract concept spoken of in a Supreme Court opinion-it's four years of memories. Those four years of memories, of the special learning environment that Edison provided for me, were honored last week. I celebrate that affirmative action has been reaffirmed as a vital part of education, and hope that more institutions of higher education will look a little bit more like Edison.

Copyright June 28, 2003, Dara E. Purvis.