Affirmative Action: It’s Not Political, It’s Personal

I don’t vote. I say this with a great deal of pride.

I’ve voted just one time in my 55 years. Back in 1992. It’s a regret of mine.

I was in college. Like many college students, I was an idealist and was going to change the world. Politicians assure those on campus that they can start by voting. So, I did.

And look where this country’s at in 2026. You’ve got to pick a side, and you must never agree with the other. You must mock the other. Democrats and Republicans are like the Bloods and Crips. Gangsters. One’s blue, the other’s red, you pick a side and constantly fight, to the detriment of everyone around you. In the end, no one wins.

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I am neither liberal nor conservative. I’m apolitical.  

I don’t like politicians, groups or victims. Which brings me to affirmative action.

I promised to stay away from politics on this website, and we know that affirmative action is a political football, right? Democrats tend to love it, Republicans loathe it. Well, I have an opinion on it, too, but it has nothing to do with politics. With me, it’s personal. So much so that I wrote about it in my new book.

I’ve mentioned that I don’t like groups or victims, so you might already have your mind made up on where I stand with the issue. See for yourself. Here’s an excerpt from chapter 14:

I’m the poster child of affirmative action’s success.

I was only allowed into Northern Illinois University, where I earned my undergraduate degree, through their CHANCE program. Neither my grade-point average nor ACT score was high enough to get me in, but CHANCE accepts students on the fringes. That was me, as I spent my teen years not caring about school. I was accepted to Southern Illinois University, but my mother wanted me to attend NIU. She thought NIU was a better school than SIU simply because I didn’t meet its qualifications. I wanted to go to NIU, too, because of its journalism program.

Thankfully, I was given a CHANCE. NIU’s student newspaper, The Northern Star, for which I worked two years covering the school’s football, baseball, softball, wrestling and women’s basketball teams, annually bashed the program in editorials for being a form of affirmative action that was unfair to whites.

Kaitlyn told me she knew she wasn’t prepared for the expectations college brings. I wasn’t either. I was put on alert by CHANCE after my first semester at NIU. I took four classes, ending up with D’s in two of them. In my first journalism class, Intro to Mass Communications, this journalism major, who would go on to work 15 years as a full-time journalist, earned a D.

As a CHANCE member, I had to attend weekly meetings with mentors and peers. In these meetings, you saw others struggling like you. The mentors taught us how to study and prioritize and made sure we got our asses up in the morning and went to class. The program was invaluable to me.

I graduated from this directional college with an overall GPA of 2.59. These paltry credentials tend not to advance one to the Ivy League. So, how exactly did this ham & egger end up earning a master’s in Teaching of English from one of the country’s finest graduate schools 20 years later?

Thank you, Peace Corps.

I first considered Columbia University’s Teachers College (TC) while in my second year as a Peace Corps teacher in Madagascar. A couple of other volunteers from my cohort had applied, including a friend who was accepted. I told her I wanted to segue to a career in teaching once I returned to America, and she thought I should apply. Peace Corps volunteers’ chances of acceptance are greater than others as the school offers a fellowship specifically for returned Peace Corps volunteers.

TC’s program helps new teachers find full-time jobs in New York City, usually in challenging urban settings. Once you’re done teaching in the afternoon, you head over to TC for night school. In two years, you receive your master’s. I applied. They took one look at my background – I’d only started teaching a year earlier – and that GPA, and I can imagine their reaction. Why is this guy applying here? I was rejected.

I emailed someone in the TC registrar’s office, asking what it might take to eventually get accepted. A lady wrote back, telling me I needed to show that I was serious about teaching and to do so by working in the industry and taking education classes. She thought it would be a good idea to take the GRE, even though TC does not require you to do so. I took her advice, enrolling in DePaul University on Chicago’s North Side in the fall of 2009. DePaul’s education program is similar to TC in that it’s geared toward those who want to teach in urban settings. I took five classes and earned four A’s (The other was pass/fail, which I passed). Meanwhile, I took a part-time job at a South Side Catholic elementary school as an after-school kindergarten teacher. I was a glorified baby-sitter, but at least it was something to get me in the door. I took the GRE around the same time and scored in the 50 percentile in math, 90 in verbal reasoning.

I re-applied to TC. They still had their doubts. After receiving my application, transcripts and various other paperwork, instead of telling me if I had been accepted, they told me they wanted to interview me. I would talk on the phone with the director of the school’s Peace Corps Fellowship program. I was nervous at the start but prepared.

He asked me my pedagogic philosophy and why I wanted to teach. Looking back, I couldn’t possibly have answered that first question how I would now. I had never taught in the U.S. How could I have a philosophy when I didn’t know what inspired kids to want to learn? My answers, I’m sure, were something I read in a textbook at DePaul.

Whatever I said worked, I was accepted and I moved to New York in May 2010. I owe a debt to Peace Corps. Had I not done it, I would never have been considered by TC.

Upon my arrival on campus, I was intimidated. My classmates had received their bachelor’s degrees at elite colleges, ol’ Directional College Dave had not. I took a philosophy class the first semester filled with philosophy majors who had not yet started teaching. Oh, how they’d go on and on about Rousseau, Socrates, Nietzsche, Sartre, heavyweights I hadn’t yet been introduced to. I kept my mouth shut – at first.

By the middle of the semester, I had figured out that many of my classmates were book smart but had no idea how to apply what they knew to real-life situations. They could regurgitate a bunch of clever quotes from, say, de Beauvoir, but they couldn’t tell you how to prevent students, especially the most challenging, from falling into a life of quiet desperation. I was no authority either, but as a full-time teacher in the South Bronx, I could speak about it more expertly than my classmates could. So, I stopped being scared and spoke up.

I realized I had something to add to the class. I also realized I liked learning. As an undergrad, I didn’t so much. I looked at college as a means to an end – newspaper reporting. I looked at high school as nothing more than a necessary nuisance. In graduate school, I finally blossomed as a learner. I earned all A’s. Yes, who doesn’t in grad school, but the point is I was genuinely interested in almost everything I learned in graduate-level classes. I try to keep that in mind when I’m frustrated with students who are hard to reach. It’s easy to give up on them. But, who knows, that kid, like me, may grow to thrive in a future learning environment.

It’s my opinion that the best thing new teachers can do is work at their craft while, at the same time, learning more about it in a classroom with their peers. That’s what happens at TC. It’s difficult at first, especially for new teachers. You can read all you want about how trying it is to teach challenging students, but until you experience it, you don’t know. Days can be long and frustrating. And when you’re through, you grab a quick dinner and take the subway to Morningside Heights, where TC is located, for a three-hour class. It’s tiring, but it speeds up the learning curve.

And what great things I learned at that school! Some of the most renowned professors work there. John Henry Browne, who died in 2017, comes to mind. He taught in NYC public schools for 32 years, which is enough to make you either crazy or learned. He was a little of both, besides being a Shakespeare scholar. He knew how to make Shakespeare accessible to middle school and high school students – he would often remind you to let them act it out in class – and many of his ideas I’ve made my own. My writing professor, Yolanda Sealey Ruiz, a published poet on the side, was gracious enough to visit my 7th grade all-girls class that was giving me a hard time. She facilitated a Peace Circle with us at my school.

You may have heard of TV talking head Marc Lamont Hill. I took an education class of his that centered around teaching methods to inner-city kids. Hill is Hollywood, arriving on campus in a limo, but he, too, I learned from, as those familiar with his expansive vocabulary and intellect might imagine.

Famed philosopher Maxine Greene, who by the time I was at TC was well into her 90s and no longer a full-time professor there, nevertheless would sometimes pop into classes for words of encouragement to star-struck students. The guest speakers the school attracts are top-notch. Educational theorist Pedro Noguera spoke for three hours during one of my classes with Professor Ruiz.

The TC experience was my Camelot. I learned new classroom activities, pondered philosophical theories, fellowshipped with other novice teachers. Some of the classroom activities I learned there – Socratic Circles, fishbowls, freeze frames, graffiti-texting, partner journals – I still incorporate. As part of our fellowship, former Peace Corps volunteers must complete a social justice unit to graduate. I had my seventh-grade class perform a series of short social justice plays, all written by them, during an assembly at my school. The fellowship program gives teachers grant money to help make the unit the best it can be. I used the cash for paint supplies and stage props. Our kids created their own sets and did skits on teen pregnancy, police brutality, bullying, suicide and the proliferation of unhealthy fast foods in the ‘hood. It’s the most worthwhile thing I’ve done in teaching.

I earned my master’s in 2012. From crummy high school student to affirmative action beneficiary to the Ivy League. If it were up to some people, I would never have been allowed to walk this path.

Glenn Loury, the black conservative economist and writer, said affirmative action is not the solution nor the problem. Harvard’s first black tenured economics professor, speaking at an event at the College of the Holy Cross in 2019, said, “Don’t patronize my people. Don’t judge us by a different standard. Don’t lower the bar! Why are you lowering the bar? What’s going on there? Is that about guilt or pity? Tell me a pathway to equality that is rooted in either one of those things.”

Sounds like the Supreme Court agrees, having ended race-conscious college admissions in June 2023. Said Loury, a South Side Chicago native (!), “Affirmative action is dishonest. It’s not about equality, it’s about covering ass.”

I assume Loury and the Supreme Court believe the playing field is now level. I wish they could teach at all the places I have. They would understand then, unequivocally, that it is not for many reasons, including bad teachers, unstable homes where learning habits cultivated at school aren’t being reinforced, dangerous and poor communities.

I was sheltered from those things and even I needed affirmative action’s help. Then I found my lane and adapted. And now this affirmative action baby is doing what John Dewey envisioned way back when he devised his democratic citizen model. I’m giving back to the community in maybe the most meaningful way a black man can – I’m teaching at-risk kids all over the world.

That’s the goal of affirmative action. Not to cover ass, screw white kids out of an education from their preferred school, nor lower standards. I have it to thank for steadying my shaky academic foundation and giving me hope, support and vision.

Those who oppose affirmative action must not believe learners can be late bloomers. Either that, or they don’t care.