just read this NYT article, “the new affirmative action,” written by David Leonhardt, about how UCLA is dealing with fallout of prop 209. for context, it starts out with describing the situation UCLA found itself in after prop 209 passed:
The changes on U.C.L.A.’s campus were hard to miss. In 1997, the freshman class included 221 black students; last fall it had only 100. In the region with easily the largest black population west of the Mississippi River, the top public university had a freshman class in which barely 1 in 50 students was black.
and goes on to pursue a very interesting discussion & exploration of how UCLA (and other schools, potentially, if bans on affirmative action persist) is getting around fucked up laws. also nice to see such an in-depth story when it sometimes feels like people are sick of hearing about affirmative action or think we’ve somehow moved beyond the need for affirmative action. country still needs it, but now it seems we’ve got to rely on outsourcing to non-government entities to enact some equal opportunity goodness.
Other posts you might be interested in:
Blog RSS Blog Comments RSS
Jesse! wrote:
thanks for posting this, Sam… I’ll come out and say that I have a love/hate relationship with Affirmative Action and Prop 209 and so just to stir the pot, here are some points:
* AA was a mandate and a compromise, there were no rules/laws as to how “equal opportunity” was to be achieved. Ergo, the “system” tended to be creating 3 piles, yes, no, maybe… Guess who went into the maybe pile…
* Prop 209 removed the race bit on the state level only. The race ID on college apps in Cali is “optional”, yet to get some federal funding you HAVE to fill it out.
* While certainly a factor in overall admissions, if you look at those early numbers post-prop 209, minority APPLICANTS went down overall; perhaps folks felt they were not welcomed at UC and CSU schools and opted for something else… a subtle, yet important difference to point out.
* however, the article here points to considerable evidence that AA has narrowed the gaps between the races and generally “was working” more or less…
* there were significant flaws to AA, like that all Asians were lumped into one group. At UC Berkeley, there were/are so many Asians that according to the AA “rules” no more were given special treatment… this meant underprivileged and underrepresented Asian Americans (Vietnamese, Filipinos and many other S.E. Asian Americans) were also not given special treatment, when perhaps they should have…
but a good article to sum up the debate…
Posted on 01-Oct-07 at 8:46 am | Permalink
Lunamania wrote:
I’m a strong believer in affirmative action and appreciate that it can be a complicated issue (well, it’s really not that complicated if you look at the alarming numbers.) Anyway, I’ve basically approached a place of zero tolerance for crappy coverage of the issue so I appreciate recommendations for good articles. Will check it out. Thanks, Sam.
Posted on 01-Oct-07 at 2:49 pm | Permalink
courageous kiwi wrote:
Affirmative action was invented to keep the yellow man down. We need AA about as much as Southern California needs more silicone.
Posted on 02-Oct-07 at 5:59 pm | Permalink