Harvard Homeboy : A Chicano on the Fast Track Now Heads for Prison

“I’m a homeboy now. At Harvard, I didn’t fit.”

--Jose Luis Razo

Harvard Class of 1989

A writer friend warned me that this case brings no easy answers. There are no “obvious conclusions” to be drawn by the story of Jose Luis Razo, the former Harvard student who was convicted of armed robbery in Orange County two months ago. “The whole thing seems problematic,” my friend cautioned. “My hunch is that the kid’s shoulders can’t stand much metaphor. Forget it.” Still, I fear there is much that remains unsaid. So I say it.

The day after the Harvard Class of 1989 received the golden passports that would open any door of their choosing, Joe Razo, who would have been among them, was instead in a courtroom in Santa Ana facing a possible 15 years in prison.

So came to an end the drama, two years after it was first played out in the national media, of the Latino honors student from La Habra who, a jury decided, held up at least six stores and fast-food restaurants during school breaks over the course of 18 months.

If one seeks tragedy--dishonor, if you will--the drama will not disappoint. The wasted future of a bright young man imprisoned in a correctional system that leaves those it punishes scarred and beaten, seldom corrected. The pain of a family that sacrificed much of their own lives to enhance his. The white alumni offended by his abuse of Ivy League benevolence--”See what happens when. . . . “

People following the story can only guess at the “why” of Razo’s turning from the educational fast track to armed robbery. Psychologists offer simplistic theories about self-destructive “sun children”--bright minority students who excel beyond expectation and then turn away from the guiding light of success to burn out like a shooting star. In New York, a writer draws what seems an insightful comparison between the Razo case and that of Eddie Perry, a black honors student from Exeter, bound for Stanford on a scholarship, who was killed as he was mugging an undercover policeman near Harlem. Razo himself says he felt “alienated” in Cambridge. Harvard, in characteristic fashion, disclaims responsibility. “An isolated case,” Harvard says. Ah. . . .

Four years ago, Joe and I entered Harvard as two of 35 or so Mexican-Americans in the Class of ’89. Some of those students were from wealthy families and private schools in the Southwest; others were from poor, Spanish-speaking families. Some wanted to take their Harvard degree “back to the community”; others intended to take it only as far as Wall Street. In Harvard’s eyes, we were similar; in fact, we had our differences.

Unfortunately, at Harvard as in the world in general, what makes people different is not always respected. Insecurity as to whether you really “belong” in a foreign environment can breed intolerance toward others. At its extreme, it becomes a kind of contest to “fit in”--a contest that seems to have only one kind of winner.

At Harvard, Joe and I were friends. Yes, I think that’s fair to say. Sometimes we argued politics or talked football over a few beers; we felt comfortable with one another, I think. It was our school that my friend never felt comfortable with. He seemed to pass through a stage that many scared and alienated young people in elite schools go through--wearing his ethnicity like a badge. Or was it more like a shield? I remember him in the costume of an East L.A. “homeboy”--the khaki pants, the Pendleton shirt, the bandanna around his head. I remember his tattoos and his homesickness for La Habra. I remember seeing him with a black eye and learning that he had been in a fistfight with a couple of local “townies” because of a racist remark they made. Young working-class whites sometimes resent the presence of Chicanos on an elite hometown campus that remains largely closed to them. It’s ironic that Joe felt shut out from the campus, too.

Harvard Chicano. Twenty years in existence and the term still seems an enigma, a paradox that doesn’t lend itself to a neat definition. Two concepts, once as distinct as oil and water, now are joined in the name of educational progress. Who are the people who bear the weight of that label? A policy-maker’s “model minority,” one whose excellence will make affirmative action easier. A “teacher’s pet” always waving her arm with the right answer. A high school counselor’s “overachiever” needing little guidance. Most of all, a tearful parent’s pride and joy, proof that with hard work anything is possible.

Since the central character in this tragic play is a personification of this paradox, there is a temptation to romanticize his experience. A respected Chicano studies professor who knows neither Joe nor Harvard speculates that “Ivy League racism made Razo miserable at Harvard; he committed those crimes to get out.” I’ve heard others say that Joe’s story is really one of a scared young man who wanted off the fast-moving treadmill that a well-meaning society had placed him on. Maybe. But there are gaps in the drama that aren’t filled by even the most sweeping of “obvious conclusions.” Within the context of life at Harvard, Razo’s rebellious appearance was not unusual. Many freshmen adopt a costume, a mannerism, a way of presenting themselves to others. In the Commune on the Charles, the extraordinary is ordinary. But not every student who sports torn Levi’s, or a serape, around Harvard Yard commits armed robbery during summer vacation. There must be more.

At his trial, mention was made of Razo’s dabbling in drugs. Seeking shelter from his somewhat charmed life, he entered the hallucinogenic world of PCP. For him, this world promised acceptance. It is, after all, a world already inhabited by hundreds of thousands of young Latinos like him, or unlike him--those that he had always been told he didn’t have to be like.

With the emergence of drugs into the drama, many people lost interest. Razo was no longer a “good victim.”

It is tempting to take the complex human experience that began to unfold during Razo’s trial and reduce it to a more manageable drug story, but the critical onlooker presses for more.

Some of us know, and few will admit, that Joe Razo experienced a kind of double alienation while at Harvard. Confused and alone, he instinctively sought refuge in the one corner of that foreign world that appeared familiar.

The Mexican-American students’ association at Harvard is called Raza; its professed goal for 20 years has been to provide a support system for students who, on their application, checked the box marked “Mexican-American/Chicano.” Raza works with the admissions office to ensure active recruitment of Latino high school students, and the organization’s rhetoric promises that it will make every effort to provide emotional support when they arrive in Cambridge. In short, Raza is supposed to help create a nurturing environment in which Latinos can adjust to life at Harvard without necessarily surrendering their cultural identity at the front gate.

Yet those who know these types of student organizations also know that sometimes they become as intolerant of individual differences as they accuse the campus community at large of being. Ethnic organizations do sometimes develop an image deemed “proper” for their group and exclude those who appear to contradict that image.

To those members of Raza eagerly awaiting their admittance to the world of BMWs and designer suits, Razo and his East L.A. look represented that sort of contradiction. He was an embarrassment to some, a reminder of how close they still were to the world they’d left behind. He was dressed like the kid whose fate, we had been told, we could escape if we studied hard. So we did. And when, through all our effort, we arrived safely in the ivy-covered world of cashmere and Kennedys, there he was--staring us in the face and forcing us to deal with the painful realization that we had not progressed nearly as far as we thought we had. He made us feel uncomfortable, then guilty for feeling uncomfortable.

I remember my last conversation with Joe, before finals in our sophomore year--the boyish expression on his face as he described his eagerness to go home. He asked if I had time for lunch; I frowned and said no, some errand in the Square. He understood. None of us ever had time for Joe.

A few weeks later I was in California, clerking for the state attorney-general’s office. My father called and asked if I’d read the morning paper. “A guy from Harvard was arrested,” he said. “Did you know him?” Yes, I did.

As I punch out the painful impressions of that time, my father looks over my shoulder and seems intrigued by the element of betrayal. “This happened at Harvard?” he asks. “Are you saying that the higher we climb, the less united we become?” Maybe that is what I am saying. Or maybe this is personal. Maybe this is just guilt, another confession by another Latino at Harvard. Maybe.

Maybe I just want people to think about what happens when a young man walks a tightrope between two very different worlds. Each has a claim on him. Harvard homeboy. Between the worlds that those two words represent is, perhaps, a barrier that should not be crossed.