As you can see from the photo, I am both white and male. It probably won't surprise you to learn that I am from a middle-class background, went to a private high school, and have spent most of my life as part of a comfortable majority. What I have to say next may surprise you.

I have benefitted directly from affirmative action.

It isn't supposed to work that way, right? I'm supposed to be angry, resentful, disaffected, and generally irritable that certain people get a "helping hand" while I have to prove myself. I should have a few horror stories under my belt describing how I w as passed over so a racial quota could be filled. I'm supposed to gripe that only minorities get scholarships, or whine that no white male has a chance in a million of scoring a TA job, or complain that my favorite road was renamed for Martin Luther King, Jr. Right?

Affirmative action, and the mentality it creates, has enriched many stages of my life. My best friend in grade school was Michael Dillard. He was black, from a poor family, and the only things keeping him in my mostly-white private school were an excellen t set of grades and a state minority scholarship. Without that scholarship, I would have missed out on one of the closest friendships I've had so far.

When I arrived at college, I went out of my way to take women's studies and African American literature classes, because I instinctively felt that my previous education had been one-sided. These were in many ways the most memorable and interesting classes of my college career. "Blasphemous" departures from the standard English curriculum, such as Marxist/feminist readings of Shakespeare or studies of black poets, formed the core of these cutting-edge classes € a welcome change from the dusty classics educ ation required by my English major. Without those "special" classes, set apart from the others by specific departments and subject matter, I never would have read Lorraine Hansberry, or watched the films of Oscar Micheaux, or wondered if Hamlet's wavering was due to barely-suppressed homosexuality. I would have a smaller, more rigidly defined and confined worldview. I believe I would be a lesser shadow of the person I am now. Looking at the stale, white/European/male content of my other classes, it is eas y to imagine that such minority-focused "special" courses would have never existed without the mentality of affirmative action and the specific funding it generates. One of my instructors told me how the departments trembled every time their funding came up for review.

All of us, of every color and creed, have gained from such programs. By allowing minorities equal access to our institutions, we have brought America to a state of cultural richness unmatched by any nation in the world.

To claim that affirmative action is unconstitutional is not only dead wrong, it is undemocratic. The Constitution is not rigid law nor an instruction manual - it is a set of ideals, describing the best of all possible worlds. It was written with the forward-thinking premise that these democratic ideals would some day come to pass - they most certainly did not exist at the time of the document's signing. Affirmative action is a set of initiatives and structures designed to bring society more closely in line with the constitutional ideal: America as a nation of equal citizens, where the diseases of racial hatred, discrimination, and xenophobia that afflict the nations of the world have finally been cured.

There is no doubt that affirmative action programs have been exploited for personal gain by some individuals. Conservatives claim that this abuse means such legislation is fatally flawed, and should be dismantled. If a few abuses of power are all that is needed to invalidate an institution, our government should have been eradicated long ago. It is interesting how often Capitol Hill conservatives find these fatal flaws in "soft" legislative programs while their number-juggling defense bills and GOPACs rem ain uninspected.

To claim that affirmative action laws are no longer needed is to lie through the teeth. We are a nation obsessed with race, a condition propagated and encouraged by the media, politicians, and a biased educational system. When was the last time you heard a newscaster discuss a murder without disclosing the race of the victim, or the killer? They seldom tell you a name, but they never fail to mention the color. Will we always identify ourselves by such superficial means?

Most importantly, can we legislate ourselves out of this race obsession? If that legislation means equal education, I believe we can. If it means equal representation, we will all benefit.

I met up with my friend Michael a few summers back, while visiting my home town. I was still trying to form an opinion on affirmative action at the time, and I asked him, "Don't you find it slightly insulting, this suggestion that you need a helping hand just to get by?" He turned to me and said with a sad expression, "If the alternative was a slap in the face, which would you choose?"

Michael Eilers is a creative writing graduate student and arts reporter for the Arizona Daily Wildcat.