A Darker Shade of Crimson: Odyssey of a Harvard Chicano

For Latinos, who will soon be the largest minority group in America, the doors of higher education have opened only a crack. But in 1985 an ambitious young Mexican-American from California's rural San Joaquin Valley became one of the few to enter America's most prestigious university. The lessons Ruben Navarrette, Jr., learned as he journeyed from his middle-class surroundings to an exclusive 350-year-old world of privilege would forever alter his life, shape his views on the relationship between education and ethnicity, and define his conception of self.... He was the son of first-generation Mexican-Americans who had, by many standards, already beaten the system. Yet his parents could not influence their son's acceptance into Harvard University with endowments or alumni connections. Getting into the Ivy League school was something Ruben Navarrette had to do entirely on his own. And he did, only to find his admission belittled by teachers and classmates with whispers of "affirmative action" and his idealism clouded by anger and guilt long before he ever set foot in Harvard Yard. Although he respected his heritage, he embraced American culture as his own. When his grandmother asked him questions in Spanish, he answered in English. But among strangers Navarrette found himself struggling with questions of identity and ethnicity in Harvard's dormitories and classrooms, his only refuge on campus being the Chicano student organization. Defiantly wearing a heavy serape as a badge of a culture he sought to reclaim, Navarrette began his painful journey into adulthood, torn between the separate worlds of Harvard and home, and increasingly aware of two educational systems, one reserved for the sons and daughters of wealth and privilege, the other thrust upon the majority of Mexican-American students. Yet nothing would rock his assumptions like the arrest of a fellow Chicano classmate for armed robbery. Navarrette's attempts to understand his friend's actions would ultimately sweep him into conflict, both public and private, and leave him wondering whether he'd ever truly fit in - either in the world that he had been allowed to visit for four years or in the one to which he knew he must eventually return. A Darker Shade of Crimson is the deeply personal story of a young man struggling to reconcile the expectations of his family, his race, and society at large with his own opinions and values. It is also a book that dares to confront the hard issues of what needs to be done to provide a quality education for Latinos and other minorities in America beyond merely honoring the few bright stars that pierce the darkness of racial stereotypes. Whatever one's views on affirmative action, racism, and liberal education, this provocative chronicle will offer a new perspective on these issues and a message of hope for tomorrow's generation.