As a child, Shannon told her father that when she was old enough, she wanted to go to
Yale University, just as he had done. She didn't realize that Yale didn't allow women at
the time - and her father never told her either. He just encouraged her to study hard and
do well in school. She did. And by the time she was ready to go to college, Yale had
become co-ed and Shannon followed in her father's footsteps.
Shannon O’Brien, D Massachusetts, candidate for Governor
Apart from these statements, only one other candidate came close to referencing ethnic civil
rights when discussing their family of origin, and that was William Janklow:
His father was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg war criminal trials.
William J. Janklow, R South Dakota, candidate for House AL
These statements do not add up to a description of the U.S. where equal opportunity already
existed. Matsunaka and Boggs-McDonald describe a world their parents had to help integrate—
in the case of Matsunaka’s father, he literally had to fight to do it. O’Brien’s description perhaps
is different in that it gives the sense that though Yale may have discriminated against women in
the past, the institution was at least ready for her by the time she was ready for it; she does not
suggest that she was at the forefront of integrating the University. Apart from Carol Roberts’s
statement about opportunity and diversity above, these were the only explicit passages that came
close to referencing the idea of equal opportunity.
It could be argued that idea of equal opportunity is not made explicit by candidates when
they weave stories about their families of origin because it could be assumed, based on the
results. Candidates had a tendency to tell stories of triumph, whereby their families struggled but
worked hard and achieved things for themselves in the U.S. Perhaps the notion of equal
opportunity is implicit in the outlines of that basic tale; if it were not, then how could they have
achieved anything, given that they did not always start out with much? But I think that these
stories, rather than suggesting an equal playing field without barriers to the individual,
emphasize the triumph of the individual despite the barriers which may have been in front of
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