“Hey, before you abuse, criticize and accuse
Better walk a mile in my shoes...”
— “Walk A Mile In My Shoes,” a 1968 song by Joe South
Now that the United States Supreme Court has determined that affirmative action is no longer necessary in our nation’s colleges, what’s next for ethnic minority students?
They say that our country should be colorblind when it comes to race. Is this possible? After all, color does not go away just because some might tell us that they cannot see it. Others say that they treat everyone alike. When this is said to me, I ask them if they treat their friends and relatives the same. It is impossible to do so, because everyone has different needs.
I worked with many ethnic minority students as a professional Utah educator for more than 31 years. This took me to three local school districts, the University of Utah and Salt Lake Community College. I was able to work at every level of education from pre-school to med school as a classroom teacher, school counselor and administrator.
Affirmative action played a major role in these accomplishments, which began in 1972 when I started teaching at Salt Lake City’s West High School.
After a short stint as a high school counselor at Layton High School, I was hired by the University of Utah in 1977 to develop a program to recruit, advise and retain ethnic minority students who might attend one of the University of Utah’s four health-science colleges. The program was federally funded. We employed undergraduate students to recruit and assist local high school students. Part of my time was spent traveling around the country to interview ethnic minority students in other universities interested in attending our medical school.
One of the schools I visited was Harvard University. They had an excellent summer program which brought in outstanding ethnic minority undergraduates from all over the country. This gave me an idea to start one at the University of Utah for high school seniors. Through this program, we were able to pay for students to attend summer classes, stay in dorms and pair up with a health-science mentor. At the end of the summer, we all went up to the Uintas for a weekend. Some of these disadvantaged students had never been camping before.
The Granite School District hired me in 1980 to oversee all of their multicultural programs. One of the titles I inherited was Equal Employment Opportunity Officer. This meant that I was responsible for writing the district’s affirmative action policy and developing programs to ensure that the policy was carried out.
At that time, I was the only ethnic minority administrator in the state’s largest school district. We had very few teachers — and no counselors — who were ethnic minorities. It was imperative that we change this situation. Fortunately, the district’s personnel director was open to hiring ethnic minority staff, so long as I could recruit them.
I was able to secure some federal funding to implement a district-wide counselor-intern program. We paid tuition costs for ethnic minority teachers who wanted to attend the University of Utah to become counselors. Eventually, we were able to place five interns in local high schools. We also paid tuition costs for teachers who wanted to be administrators. This enabled us to add four ethnic minority administrators to our ranks. Tutors and classroom aides working for our Multicultural Center who were interested in becoming teachers were also given assistance.
Staff at the University of Utah’s Graduate School of Education were very receptive to our recruitment program. They became instrumental in assisting those we referred with applications for admission.
Later on, I became a secondary school administrator with the district. By writing grant applications for state funding, I was able to implement affirmative action goals at all three of the high schools where I worked. The money was spent on costs associated with taking ethnic minority students to the University of Utah to acquaint them with college life.
Most of these activities took place because the federal government had a mandate to implement affirmative action in our nation’s schools. Without being required to consider race as a factor when fostering upward mobility among ethnic minority students, what will motivate white school leaders to ensure that these students attend college in sizable numbers? It did not happen before affirmative action became the law of the land.
Simply saying that we are colorblind, or that we treat everyone alike, will not work. There are many reasons why so many ethnic minority students are considered disadvantaged. Suffice it to say that the nation’s Supreme Court ruling that affirmative action is no longer necessary will not make it so. The federal affirmative action mandate may go away, but the need for such action will not go away.
Luciano S. Martinez lives in Murray and is a retired Utah educator who enjoyed working with ethnic minority students. They helped him remember that he had once been in their shoes.