In the early 1990s, Ward Connerly, the most prominent proponent of ending racial preferences in his generation, rattled the uneasy peace. The case shaped a generation of affirmative-action regimes in higher education. Bakke, it ruled that racial quotas were unconstitutional––that “no applicant may be rejected because of his race, in favor of another who is less qualified, as measured by standards applied without regard to race.” But it also approved affirmative action to promote diversity so long as race was only one factor among many that came under consideration in admissions. In the 1978 case Regents of the University of California v. He sued, alleging that he had been excluded solely on the basis of his race, violating his rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That upset Allan Bakke, a white Vietnam War veteran twice denied admission despite a GPA and test scores that exceeded those of all the minority students admitted in both years he applied. Intent on diversifying its student body in the 1970s, administrators increased its class size to 100 students each year, with 16 spots reserved for minority applicants. Founded in 1966, its earliest classes were almost all white. The California battle over racial preferences first emerged at the UC Davis medical school. But California voters looking to the future of their wildly diverse state were correct to conclude that permitting its officials to treat racial groups differently would be dangerous. Kimberley Reyes: Affirmative action shouldn’t be about diversityĭisappointed progressives fear that Prop 16’s defeat will stymie their efforts to reduce racial inequality. The margin of defeat, 56 to 44 percent, was striking to students of political history, because it suggests that race neutrality is more popular now than when it was initially mandated by a 1996 ballot initiative that passed by a slightly smaller margin. And last week, a majority of voters in this Democratic stronghold, where no single ethnic group constitutes a majority, reaffirmed their long-standing preference for neutrality: California voters defeated Proposition 16, an attempt by progressives to remove the provision in the state constitution that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race or gender in public employment, education, and contracting. These various disputes over racial quotas and affirmative action have tended to anticipate national controversies. For at least 50 years, Californians have been fighting about whether their state government should be race neutral, treating all individuals equally under the law regardless of the color of their skin, or race conscious, granting preferential treatment to certain groups while discriminating against others to remedy past discrimination or increase diversity.
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