February 14, 2017

Stephen Miller as a high schooler

Stephen Miller in his high school yearbook

Univision - The president's young adviser was a provocateur in his California high school, where he was hostile to Latinos and other minorities.

Several reports identified Miller as the brains behind the controversial executive order that temporarily banned people from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States....|

Miller's precocious politization as he entered Santa Monica High was even more surprising because the school, just blocks from the Pacific Ocean, prided itself as a multicultural space where diversity was celebrated. Hispanics were the single largest minority, with 30 percent of the 3,400 students...  African Americans followed at 12 percent and Asians made up 5 percent.

In liberal Santa Monica, students in the city's largest high school tended to hold progressive ideas, to be environmentally conscious and open minded.

But Miller went the other way. He quickly stood out as a contentious and provocative student whose conservative and ultra-nationalist politics put him continuously at odds with teachers, administrators and students.

Displaying his hostility toward minorities, Miller complained to school administrators about announcements in Spanish and festivals that celebrated diversity.

School Board member Oscar de la Torre said he had numerous verbal clashes with Miller, and recalled that Miller turned up one day for a meeting of a committee created to help Hispanic and African American students. But Miller was not there to help, de la Torre told Univision Noticias.

“He wanted to sabotage us,” de la Torre said. “He confronted everyone, denying that racism existed. He said that was a thing of the past.”

Miller wrote about those meetings years later, during his time at Duke University. “I was quickly labeled a racist, and after the session de la Torre became combative. He, like countless others during my time at Santa Monica High, tried to convince me that blacks and Hispanics were all victims of inescapable discrimination, deeply ingrained in the white ruling class and all public institutions,” he wrote.

... Most of the students avoided arguments with Miller. Even though many thought he was quick and smart, they also saw him as incapable of calm dialogue. In private, they often made fun of him. His eccentricities were so notorious that The Samohi published a satire of his rants, expressing his joy over the cancellation of a food festival. “We are finally free, free to eat the bland and over-cooked food that is our birth right as Americans,” it said.


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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Let's not go overboard with claiming Santa Monica as some liberal bastion. The reputation might have been deserved years ago prior to the gentrification of the area and it's gradual transition as iconic model-piece of LA's 'trendy west side.' There's a lot of money in that town, and if anything these days, it populace tends more Libertarian if they actually manage to think about anything other than themselves or politics at all.
Hey, did you hear the news? SURFS UP!