Word: raza
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...typical Chicano. In fact, the author, Ruben Navarrette Jr. '89-'90, is far from typical, and his autobiography presents issues of affirmative action, civil rights, growing up and adjusting to Harvard from a partial perspective, overshadowed much of the time by Navarrette's personality. His frequent criticisms of RAZA, the Mexican-American student association, add to the book's sense ofone-sidedness...
Navarrette's only recourse during his time at Harvard was RAZA and the organization's members. He writes that RAZA was "the centerpiece of my very existence at Harvard. I drank RAZA. I dated RAZA." Unfortunately for Navarrette, he alienated himself even from his friends in RAZA when he publicly criticized Cesar Chavez's leadership of the United Farm Workers...
Alongside his criticisms, Navarrette writes favorably of Harvard, referring nostalgically to his graduation and to many of the students and faculty he met. Navarrette is willing to tell any Mexican-American student to choose Harvard over other big name colleges. He reserves stern criticism, however, for RAZA, Harvard's Mexican-American student group. Navarrette writes about being the group's political "pitbull" and allowing its activities to consume him. But after his shouting match with Chavez, he writes that he was "completely cut off socially" from the group...
...claims that groups like RAZA do not fulfill their purpose since they demand political conformity of their members. "The problem becomes that when we enter politics there's a tendency to divide the world into those that are in favor of us and those who are against us." Navarrette writes somewhat sulkily of his fall from grace in RAZA: "I was no longer us; I was finally part of them...
...event was presented by the Academic AffairsCommittee of the Harvard Foundation forIntercultural and Race Relations and co-sponsoredby Harvard-Radcliffe La Raza...