Posted on 11/06/2006 7:47:51 AM PST by SmithL
TEN YEARS ago, California voters approved Proposition 209, an initiative that banned affirmative action in public institutions throughout the state.
The state of Washington has since become the second state to take such drastic action (although voters in Michigan seem poised to approve an initiative modeled after Proposition 209 on Tuesday).
California would have been better off by "mending" instead of "ending" affirmative action, along the lines of a strategy adopted by then-President Bill Clinton. "Affirmative action ... is a bridge to a society of more equal opportunity," we wrote on our pages years ago.
Even a conservative U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of affirmative- action programs, as long as they stand up to "strict scrutiny" and are "narrowly tailored" to remedy the problems they are intended to address.
Our society remains marked by deep inequities, fractured along lines of race, sex and gender. As a society we have a collective responsibility to devise mechanisms to help eliminate those inequities.
The low representation of African American and Latino students at the University of California underscores the complexities of the challenge facing the state.
The percentage of African-American freshmen at UC's 10 campuses dropped from a depressingly low 4 percent in 1997 , the year before Prop. 209 went into effect, to an execrable 3 percent in 2005. The declines at more selective colleges such as UC Berkeley and UCLA have been even more precipitous.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
What country are these people talking about?
A conservative supreme court? What are the writers at the chronicle smoking?
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