JUST ONE OF THE GUYS
Barrett, Paul M.
JUST ONE OF THE GUYS BY PAUL M. BARRETT Linda Chavez and the Exploitation of Ethnic Identity It was a scene from everyone's Washington fantasy: bright lights, reporters, the announcement that...
...She seems to, but I can't figure it ." "I thought she was an Hispanic who was devoted to the general goals and ideals of the Hispanic community," says Don Edwards...
...Chances are the White House staff title is worth enough to Chavez to look the other way...
...Chavez's parents were poor but instilled in their daughter a strong sense that individual achievement was the ticket to self-betterment...
...they didn't have to read books about it" Chavez says she was lenient but insisted that her students at least complete the reading list...
...She has affiliated herself with the white male majority in America, and let the devil take the hindmost ?' Hispanic civil rights leaders accuse Chavez of having taken advantage of her ethnic background in politics while denouncing affirmative action for others...
...But Chavez responds that most of her old bosses never bothered to ask what she really thought about politics...
...Today, many of the most talented correspondents and anchors are black...
...Almost immediately, a prominent network correspondent approached and asked her to move to the end, out of the television cameras' range...
...They refused, and some walked out...
...Don Edwards, a perennial leader in the ADA and ACLU approval ratings...
...Dems with no clue Chavez's pre-Reagan resume gives the impression of a standard climb up the liberal career ladder...
...Even if Chavez could have succeeded without affirmative action, she benefited from it throughout her Washington career...
...They lived Chicano literature...
...In her new White House post, Chavez can be expected to continue that fight, in addition to preaching the Reagan hard line on issues such as Central America...
...There is a mean spirit in Chavez's approach to civil rights that casts a different light on her self-righteous denunciations of patronizing Democrats...
...The Reagan administration has given Chavez a chance to get a lot of resentment off of her chest...
...If I believed they had put out a call for an Hispanic woman [for director of public liaison]," says Chavez, "I would not have answered the call" She must not have been listening very closely...
...Being nonwhite is not a strong enough bond to hold many voters together...
...Chavez, who recently switched her registration to the GOP, says she feels comfortable among her new patrons, appreciated as an individual...
...Paul M. Barrett is an editor of The Washington Monthly...
...I look around, and I see things sort of working and the country working and inflation having been brought down . . . . So I moved on those kinds of issues . . . relatively recently!' While she does not seem to have let political principle stand in the way of career advancement, Chavez still presents a good example of how liberals tend to overlook political and cultural distinctions among people crudely defined as minorities...
...And apart from electoral strategy, it is condescending to assume that people think or vote a particular way because of their ethnic or racial identity...
...Taking the NEA and HEW jobs, she now admits, was a mistake...
...Chavez's exploits at the Civil Rights Commission helped land her the White House public liaison job...
...JUST ONE OF THE GUYS BY PAUL M. BARRETT Linda Chavez and the Exploitation of Ethnic Identity It was a scene from everyone's Washington fantasy: bright lights, reporters, the announcement that you've just become a Very Big Shot...
...Members of all of the Spanish-speaking groups, poor or wealthy, tend to look down on blacks...
...Chavez didn't vote at all in 1972 and sat out 1976 as well...
...Chavez has worked for a string of Democratic officials who now express surprise and chagrin over what they see as her defection to the conservative camp...
...I did not draft legislation," she emphasizes...
...They cannot count on a congenital loyalty...
...It was an effort to break individuals out of stereotypes so they could enjoy autonomy and equal opportunity...
...Among her other accomplishments, Chavez killed an ongoing study of the impact of Reagan federal aid cuts on minority college students...
...a party must speak to them at both levels...
...was she just staying quiet...
...She has not only the blessings of the administration but also those of the far right...
...After a brief stint in Jimmy Carter's Department of Health, Education and Welfare, she returned to the AFT, where in 1980 she wrote the union's campaign literature endorsing Senator Edward Kennedy over Carter in the Democratic primaries...
...According to Blakey, Chavez implied that he had his job primarily because he was black...
...She's very shrewd, very able, and she's one of us," Paul Weyrich, president of the Coalition for America, recently told The Washington Times, which itself has spared no ink in praising Chavez...
...At the April press conference announcing Chavez's promotion to the White House, Donald Regan, Reagan's chief of staff, was asked by a reporter, "Is the fact that she's an Hispanic a factor in her selection...
...It also sacrificed a degree of its independence by increasingly accepting the agenda of established civil rights groups as its own...
...I'm in the right place," she explains...
...In 1980 and 1984, she voted for Reagan...
...Not surprisingly, President Reagan's initial efforts to roll back race-conscious remedies came in for severe criticism from the commission...
...They broke into her car and defecated on the front seat...
...I balked at that...
...I found it very offensive!' When Linda Chavez, now 37, was appointed to the Civil Rights Commission post in August 1983, she was an obscure staff member from the American Federation of Teachers, a Democrat with liberal ties who had somehow found her way into the Reagan camp...
...As the agency's staff director, she helped raze what had been a nonpartisan watchdog agency and replace it with a new propaganda arm of the White House...
...Was she lying then...
...her mother is Anglo...
...You couldn't really figure out what she thought because she never committed herself with us?' Richard Fejardo, associate counsel of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, says, "She's getting into the Reagan administration as an Hispanic...
...Chavez is the first to admit that she's never had much use for the term "Hispanic...
...I fought that kind of thing even back then," she says, "because ultimately I thought it would hurt the kids ." She also became a firm opponent of the use of racial quotas...
...In television news, as just one example, local stations put almost no blacks on the air through the mid-1960s...
...I never had any hint of what I'm hearing now," says Blakey...
...Given Chavez's insight into the uses of foreign-sounding names and dark complexions, it's hard to believe that she's as naive as she claims about the Republicans' mimicking of liberal techniques...
...I thought I would continue to be forced to teach those kinds of courses...
...Chavez next worked on civil rights issues for Rep...
...A White House official familiar with the public liaison office says of the Chavez appointment: "It was an unspoken assumption that at least it would be a nonwhite nonmale...
...Democrats will have to earn those votes...
...Shanker also acknowledges that Chavez wrote the Kennedy literature only after criticizing the candidate's positions on the military...
...This patronizing attitude, says Chavez, only confirmed her life-long abhorrence of being reduced to a minority group category...
...President Reagan had chosen her to be staff director of the agency, and now the whole country was going to hear about it...
...He also comments: "Why do you think she had the job...
...That Chavez took ample advantage of liberal affirmative action in hiring seems beyond argument...
...While working for Don Edwards, Chavez says, she made her feelings on quotas known to anyone who was curious and otherwise dealt with "narrow, specific issues," primarily in preparation for oversight hearings...
...Instead, she launched research designed to challenge "the bases of some race- and sex-conscious affirmative action policies which operate on the assumption that racism and sexism are ingrained in American society?' Again, Chavez already had an answer in mind: "People...
...She's not...
...The Spanish descendants proudly maintain Iberian customs and holidays...
...At the AFT, Chavez says she felt somewhat more at home...
...No reporter would dare ask her to move out of the picture anymore...
...There is plenty of middle ground between knee-jerk endorsement of racial quotas and the search-and-destroy mission Chavez undertook at the Civil Rights Commission...
...Militants on campus," she says, demanded the course, despite her contention that there weren't enough Spanish-speaking writers in the United States to make up a syllabus...
...It's one thing to be proud of having scrambled out of poverty and through tough times...
...It was very clear to me they expected me to be the Hispanic lobbyist, to be their link to the Chicano caucus inside the NEA...
...In 1972, Chavez says, she thought of herself as a loyal Democrat, in spite of her misgivings about certain liberal positions...
...At the Civil Rights Commission, she engineered an assault on liberal programs that rely on racial preferences to redress discrimination...
...She got her first Washington job in 1972 at the Democratic National Committee, helping devise strategies to counteract Richard Nixon's wooing of Hispanic voters...
...She flunked a bunch of them...
...The right has found some new minority woman talent, and her name just happens to be Linda Chavez...
...Several of Chavez's former bosses go further, conceding that she was hired for her skin color as much as her talents...
...She makes pronouncements as an Hispanic...
...This insight, in turn, suggests the shortcomings of any "rainbow coalition" electoral strategy...
...Chavez emphasizes that she got into the University of Colorado "before the affirmative action movement" "I made it on hard work," she explains...
...Whereas bigots see dark skin and assume inferiority, liberals tend to think that all minorities have politics very much like their own...
...Assuming that a Spanish New Mexican would hold stock "Hispanic" views, liberals ignore 300 years of history and the type of sharp class divisions that are common within many minority groups...
...Still angry about the comment, Blakey denies it with a string of expletives directed at Chavez...
...As a graduate student at UCLA, Chavez had an experience that she admits left deep scars...
...Chavez subsequently did similar legislative work for the NEA's rival, the American Federation of Teachers...
...She sought and accepted jobs with organizations she now says she disagreed with at the time...
...Many of Chavez's former associates portray her as a turncoat...
...The series attracted attention among conservatives and led to Chavez's selection for the civil rights job...
...Without prompting, she describes a common emblem of pride among New Mexicans: the valiant suffering of the state's national guard unit in the World War II Bataan Death March, during which many Spanish-Americans lost their lives...
...By this past March, Reagan's tune had changed markedly...
...Civil Rights Commission...
...they are extraordinarily patriotic and often politically conservative...
...They were specifically looking for an Hispanic woman," she recalls of the NEA...
...As had happened in graduate school, Chavez says, she was perceived as an ethnic representative...
...Chavez concedes, for instance, that she has lately discovered herself moving right on "economic and social issues" It's happening, in part, "from watching this administration," she explains...
...I was in a different role then" as a staff member, Chavez argues...
...From early childhood, Chavez says, she was "a staunch anticommunist ." Like many Spanish New Mexicans, she is also a fan of the military...
...William Blakey, who was Chavez's immediate supervisor in the department, says she willingly lobbied for federally funded bilingual education and government-mandated affirmative action—two programs Chavez has opposed since joining the Reagan administration...
...Being bright, bronze-skinned, and a woman was all they required...
...Some jobs in this town you get in part because of a racial identity...
...He decided to do something about it...
...But she doesn't want to be identified with the Hispanic community...
...The class was a disaster: "The kids sort of expected that this was the course they could take to come and `rap, ' in the jargon of the day...
...Arnold Torres, former executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, says that when he met Chavez while she was working for Edwards, "she spoke differently...
...Like the Spanish, conservative and financially secure Cubans are quick to distinguish themselves from other Hispanics, especially Puerto Ricans...
...That movement aimed to make people whole, regardless of skin color...
...Weyrich says he and Laxalt, the Senate's sole Basque, shared a good chuckle over that one...
...In an unprecedented move, the president attempted to sack all of the sitting commissioners...
...Still, it must be tough at times to be gloated over as the house "nonwhite nonmale...
...She never would have been considered if we knew she held these views against civil rights," says Richard Warden, who hired Chavez at HEW when he was assistant secretary for legislative affairs...
...She intended to get a Ph.D...
...Today, as White House director of public liaison, she is the most visible Hispanic-surnamed person in the administration and its highest-ranking woman...
...My father [an aerial gunner] was a war hero, shot down many times," says Chavez...
...Paul Weyrich volunteers this relevant anecdote: "I was telling [Senator] Paul Laxalt about Linda, that she's connected with the neoconservatives, connected with the new right, connected with the business community, married to a leader in the Jewish community, and she's Hispanic...
...Now, in an attempt to affirm their liberal credentials, some Democrats deny minority group members their individuality by ascribing to them political views a black or an Hispanic or an Asian is supposed to have...
...The AFT permitted her to publish a series of articles in a union magazine on teaching "traditional values" in public schools...
...She joined the NAACP and CORE in high school and marched in front of a segregated Woolworth's in Denver...
...Does she mean it now...
...It seems to be devoting it's time to sniping at me with accusations and saying things that aren't true," Reagan complained early in his first term...
...What she doesn't realize—or, more likely, won't admit—is that the rude reporter was correct: she's still in demand as a political symbol...
...On the level of principle, the kind of affirmative action Chavez encountered among Democrats also contradicts the central thrust of the civil rights movement...
...She says she resented the sixties antiwar movement and favored American intervention in Vietnam...
...When that resulted in lawsuits and congressional opposition, he agreed to a compromise under which he ended up with a 6 to 2 majority and Chavez as staff director...
...Whereas bigots see dark skin and assume inferiority, liberals tend to think that all minorities have politics very much like their own...
...A knack for flexibility Whatever resentment toward liberals Chavez may legitimately feel, however, cannot explain away her romance with the right...
...They...
...This is the kind of tunnel vision that Chavez likes to associate with liberals...
...I guess I made certain [incorrect] assumptions about her basic politics," he says...
...The degree of outrage over Chavez's emergence as a Republican says as much about the accusers as the accused...
...You are not just responsible to your personal views!' And in Chavez's case, those personal views shifted conveniently when the opportunity arose to jump from staff to political appointee...
...in English and Irish literature, but she received tremendous pressure, and a handsome salary offer, to lecture on Chicano writing...
...People aspire individually as well as collectively...
...don't believe America is a racist society," she told The Washington Post last year, "and I sure don't believe it is...
...She went to work for the DNC because she opposed Richard Nix-, on but left a few months after arriving, unable to serve the party that nominated the dovish George McGovern...
...Other than language, most Spanish New Mexicans share little with recent Latin American immigrants to the Southwest...
...Although she was raised in Spanish-speaking communities in Albuquerque and Denver, Chavez is descended on her father's side from 17th-century Spanish colonists who settled in what is now New Mexico...
...her ancestors, she points out, were Americans before the Anglos were...
...For example, she pushed the agency to explore the negative effects on higher education of affirmative action in hiring and admissions...
...But] black people are just as different as white people...
...After that, Chavez says, she abandoned her academic aspirations: "I didn't want to stay in teaching...
...But Chavez says she always felt uncomfortable in civil rights circles...
...Regan replied, "It didn't go unnoticed, yes...
...According to the transcript, there was laughter all around...
...Until Chavez's arrival, the commission had goaded administrations—Democratic and Republican— to enforce civil rights laws more vigorously...
...In her own mind, Chavez already had a conclusion, as she noted in a 1984 memorandum to the commissioners: "A general decline in academic standards coincided with the advent of affirmative action in higher education...
...Albert Shanker, president of the union, says Chavez told him of her opposition to quotas and her hawkish views on international affairs...
...She moved, Chavez says, "but it was clear in my mind that their view was that I was put there because I was an Hispanic woman and was going to add a little color to the picture...
...didn't want the White House to get away with that...
...Chavez remembers sitting down in the middle of the row of chairs designated for the new officials...
...Linda Chavez, in short, was being taken for granted...
...it's another to deny cavalierly that racism exists and that it holds back other, less fortunate or less talented people...
...Laxalt said, 'The next thing you'll tell me is that she's Basque...
...I made it on taking the classes, taking the hard subjects, studying hard, getting good grades ." At Colorado, Chavez volunteered to tutor Mexican-American students, but she became disillusioned with the remedial program she founded when students pressured administrators into lowering minimum grade standards...
...She has returned the compliments, portraying the administration as the promised land of merit...
...Now she would refuse others the extra boost they might need to grab the bottom rung of the ladder...
...She stayed for only a year at the NEA, six months at HEW...
...Similar splits exist within black ranks here in Washington, where the world looks very different from the middle-class "gold coast" of upper 16th Street than it does from the heroin headquarters at 9th and T. "The mistake most white people make [is that] they think all black people are the same," says Jerry Washington, the street-talking host of a popular blues show on Washington radio...
...Though disadvantaged, she was never at war with "the system...
...In 1974 she moved to the National Education Association, a notoriously liberal union, where she worked as a lobbyist...
...I grew up on war stories...
...Chavez left the lecture hall for Washington, where she joined her husband, Chris Gersten...
...As Chavez enjoys pointing out, exit polls from 1984 show that upwards of 40 percent of "Hispanics" voted for Reagan...
...But Chavez's bitter memory of a spoiled debut—indeed, her whole career in Washington —provides a window through which to see the political exploitation of ethnic identity practiced by both the left and right...
...In the 4970s, the agency endorsed government-sponsored affirmative action to remedy past discrimination...
...Some accuse her of unprincipled careerism, even hypocrisy...
...Linda Chavez proudly recalls walking into the press conference with the three new appointees to the U.S...
...In retaliation, the students visited a "reign of terror" on Chavez and her family, including vandalism, bomb threats, and electricity cutoffs...
...William Blakey, for example, says that after Chavez left HEW, they had an argument about tokenism...
...In contrast to Chavez's unfortunate university experiences, affirmative action can entail widened opportunity without lowered standards...
...Still, Shanker says he was "chagrined" to see his former staff member leading the Reaganizing of the Civil Rights Commission...
...He told his chairman, Clarence Pendleton, "I don't disagree with anything you are doing ." Chavez drastically shifted the agency's research goals, reflecting her personal experience as well as White House policy...
Vol. 17 • June 1985 • No. 5
