Beset by midterms and the daily routine of the semester, I sometimes find myself reflecting on and romanticizing the time when things at Brown still felt fresh, unknown and even a bit mysterious. Everything was far too fast-paced to understand and internalize during orientation, so thinking back on the first few days of college can be useful. With a half semester’s worth of perspective under my belt, it is time to try to make sense of it.
Amid the campus alcohol presentation and the chaos of the ice cream social, my experience in the group discussion on our First Readings text, “My Beloved World” by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, still cuts through my memory. After years of preparation for college, I was excited to finally be here and engage in an intellectually stimulating activity alongside my new peers. I was particularly excited for a conversation like this one because hearing new experiences and perspectives was a big factor in why I initially wanted to come to Brown.
The conversation shifted from introductions to the book with ease, as many students related Sotomayor’s story to their own and augmented the summer reading with their own experiences. This led to valuable insights that I never could have reached on my own.
Halfway through, we landed on the topic of affirmative action — an overarching theme in the book. The discussion leader, a PhD student, asked us how this policy affected Sotomayor’s life and what her feelings are toward it. The talkative group suddenly went silent. Given my own experiences and exposure I could not imagine how the implications of this policy could have negative effects on those it was meant to help, so I was pretty confident in what I was about to say. I broke the silence: Sotomayor is a proponent of affirmative action; she gladly seized the opportunity to attend a top college and truly made the most of it.
To my surprise, my comment sparked controversy. A few hands shot up. In response to the question and in opposition to my comment, one student reflected on her experience getting into Brown as a Latinx student, saying that when she was accepted, she felt like students at her high school doubted that it was through her merit alone. They credited her achievement, in part, to the additional factor and force of affirmative action. In her eyes, affirmative action only cheapened her achievement. As I had never had to think about this consequence of affirmative action, this perspective jolted my own.
Other students empathized with this perspective and affirmed it. A black student beamed as she shared that she was the first person from her high school to be accepted at an Ivy League school, but she still couldn’t help but feel like her peers attributed her success partially to her race. Affirmative action unjustly diffused the significance of her success in college admission. She, too, regarded affirmative action with disdain as having a stigma. The PhD student leading the conversation validated these perspectives, and the common opinion of the group seemed to be that Sotomayor felt the same way.
There were two conflicting perspectives raised during the discussion: the first that affirmative action helped Sotomayor, who advocates the policy as a result, and the second that affirmative action hurts students of color because it leads others to devalue their college acceptances. Can both of these perspectives be valid?
The students participating in the discussion seemed to labor on the latter of the two. This opened my eyes to the nuance inherent in this topic and question. But the existence of conflicting views does not necessitate an absolutist approach to addressing the problems to which they pertain. The stigma associated with affirmative action does not counteract all of the benefits it offers; it is possible to problematize ideas and policies while recognizing their net social benefits.
F. Scott Fitzgerald believed that the fact that perspectives are in opposition does not necessarily make them mutually exclusive: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function,” he argued.
Sotomayor possesses this “first-rate intelligence” that Fitzgerald describes, as she reflects on both of the perspectives that my discussion group addressed. Not only that, Sotomayor also industriously employs these perspectives through her writing and legal work. In “My Beloved World,” Sotomayor reflects on the shame and embarrassment she felt when her school nurse demanded an explanation for her Princeton acceptance. Meanwhile, throughout the rest of the book, Sotomayor generally regards affirmative action with gratitude. One does not need to read her story to realize this. As a Supreme Court justice, Sotomayor strategically released “My Beloved World” a few months before the decision on Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin — a case that questioned the legality of considering race in college admission — so that the benefits of affirmative action would be fresh in the justices’ minds.
While Sotomayor is truly an exceptional person of “first-rate intelligence,” we can all strive for this open-minded and receptive mindset in which we acknowledge that our own values may sometimes conflict with each other. No value is absolute, and no group of values is mutually exclusive. I realize that my whiteness, male identity and other privileges make the existence of moral ambiguity easier to swallow. But regardless of our racial, gender, religious and other differences, we can acknowledge the conflicting outcomes of affirmative action and other hot-button issues.
Beyond the context of the First Readings discussion, I ask that we strive for the “first-rate intelligence” that Fitzgerald spoke of. Rather than clinging to one ingrained viewpoint, let’s be receptive to new ones. Let’s allow our own perspectives to accrue, overlap and even oppose one another. In doing so, we can internalize the conflicts between opposing trains of thought, empathize with multiple perspectives and transcend a mindset that sticks to absolute beliefs.
Eli Silvert ’20 can be reached at eli_silvert@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and other op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
