desert dude
Well-Known Member
As a group, Asians have been the biggest beneficiaries of California voters decision to strike down race-based preferences at California universities, and they rebelled. When simple fairness is not enough motive, self interest apparently is. Hooray for self interest!
Fire up your hate speech, race baiters!
In California, liberals have long deplored the 1996 passage of Proposition 209, which banned racial preferences at state universities. Its backers pointed out that the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which is often cited as the authority for mandating preferential treatment for racial minorities, actually forbids all racial discrimination. It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race, Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts has concluded. Polls show that most Americans agree, and even after an intense negative campaign, Prop 209 was backed by 55 percent of Californians, including three-quarters of whites, four out of ten Asians, and a quarter of blacks and Latinos. In general, Prop 209 has worked well by forcing better legitimate outreach efforts by universities. The percentage of blacks and Latinos in the overall University of California system has actually increased from what it was in 1996 (while declining at the most elite UC campuses).
Nonetheless, many California liberals are determined to return to something akin to quotas. Democratic state senator Ed Hernandez used his partys two-thirds control of the senate to push through a ballot measure that this fall would have asked voters whether to end the ban on racial preferences. The measure appeared set to fly through the assembly, which also has a two-thirds Democratic majority.
But then the public became energized. Asian Americans began agitating, as thousands of them flooded legislative offices with petitions arguing that a repeal would hurt their childrens prospects for getting into the most competitive public campuses. S. B. Woo, a former Democratic lieutenant governor of Delaware who is president of the Asian 80-20 PAC, led the effort, saying, Asian Americans have always been picked out to be stepped on in race-conscious college admissions.
The pressure led three Asian Democrats who had voted for the bill in the senate to withdraw their support and urge assembly speaker John Perez to postpone a vote. We have heard from thousands of people throughout California voicing their concerns about the potential impacts, they wrote Perez. Many in the [Asian/Pacific Islander] and other communities throughout the state feel that this legislation would prevent their children from attending the college of their choice.
Finding that few of the eight Asian Democrats in the assembly now favored going forward on the bill, Perez had no choice but to yank it off the calendar for this year. Opponents of racial preferences say efforts to make college more attainable for minority students are better directed at improving their local K12 schools so they will be better prepared. They hope the Hernandez bill isnt resurrected.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/373828/racial-preferences-under-siege-john-fund
Fire up your hate speech, race baiters!
In California, liberals have long deplored the 1996 passage of Proposition 209, which banned racial preferences at state universities. Its backers pointed out that the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which is often cited as the authority for mandating preferential treatment for racial minorities, actually forbids all racial discrimination. It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race, Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts has concluded. Polls show that most Americans agree, and even after an intense negative campaign, Prop 209 was backed by 55 percent of Californians, including three-quarters of whites, four out of ten Asians, and a quarter of blacks and Latinos. In general, Prop 209 has worked well by forcing better legitimate outreach efforts by universities. The percentage of blacks and Latinos in the overall University of California system has actually increased from what it was in 1996 (while declining at the most elite UC campuses).
Nonetheless, many California liberals are determined to return to something akin to quotas. Democratic state senator Ed Hernandez used his partys two-thirds control of the senate to push through a ballot measure that this fall would have asked voters whether to end the ban on racial preferences. The measure appeared set to fly through the assembly, which also has a two-thirds Democratic majority.
But then the public became energized. Asian Americans began agitating, as thousands of them flooded legislative offices with petitions arguing that a repeal would hurt their childrens prospects for getting into the most competitive public campuses. S. B. Woo, a former Democratic lieutenant governor of Delaware who is president of the Asian 80-20 PAC, led the effort, saying, Asian Americans have always been picked out to be stepped on in race-conscious college admissions.
The pressure led three Asian Democrats who had voted for the bill in the senate to withdraw their support and urge assembly speaker John Perez to postpone a vote. We have heard from thousands of people throughout California voicing their concerns about the potential impacts, they wrote Perez. Many in the [Asian/Pacific Islander] and other communities throughout the state feel that this legislation would prevent their children from attending the college of their choice.
Finding that few of the eight Asian Democrats in the assembly now favored going forward on the bill, Perez had no choice but to yank it off the calendar for this year. Opponents of racial preferences say efforts to make college more attainable for minority students are better directed at improving their local K12 schools so they will be better prepared. They hope the Hernandez bill isnt resurrected.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/373828/racial-preferences-under-siege-john-fund
