Playing the Loser
Why are California’s education and political leadership so receptive to demands for racial preferences?

By Cristopher Rapp, NR associate editor
April 27, 2001 9:40 a.m.

o most people, the University of California's latest admissions statistics are good news. The number of "underrepresented" minority students — black, Hispanic, and Native American — has increased for the third year in a row, and is now within 0.2 percent of the number admitted under racial preferences.

But instead of cheering, in the past few months the preference lobby has grown increasingly strident in its calls for a restoration of preferences — and now the state's elected officials are beginning to hop to.

• In early January, UC Regent William Begley proposed a reversal of SP-1, the motion, approved by the board of regents in 1995 that ended preferences. Later, Assemblyman Marco Firebaugh (D., Los Angeles) introduced a similar resolution.

• In early March, the UCLA Affirmative Action Coalition, a student group, sent letters to prospective minority students, warning them that the school was moving toward "resegregation," and that race-blind admissions created "a hostile environment for students of color on campus." Students in a similar organization at Berkley announced that they would "actively discourage" students from attending, a move endorsed by. UC student regent Justin Fong.

• A week before a pro-preferences "Day of Action" rally at UC Berkeley, the San Francisco school board unanimously approved an "emergency resolution," encouraging students to play hooky to attend the protests, and setting aside $1,500 to pay for their transportation. The superintendent eventually nixed the measure, but several schools in the area sent their students anyway; others simply looked the other way when kids didn't show up for class.

• At the Berkeley rally, held on March 8, dozens of protesters looted an Athlete's Foot shoe store, and assaulted several people, including a Chronicle reporter and a teenager who was shoved to the ground and kicked in the face. (The Chronicle later wrote that the "looting and assaults marred an otherwise peaceful rally.")

• On March 14, 500 students stormed UCLA's Royce Hall, forcing the cancellation of a mayoral debate, as 1,000 more protested outside. Two candidates, former Speaker of the Assembly Antonio Villaraigosa and Rep. Xavier Becerra (D., Los Angeles), responded by joining the protesters.

• The day after the admissions figures showing the third consecutive year of increased minority admissions, a joint senate/assembly committee scolded the UC for not increasingly them enough. "Something has to happen, and something has to happen soon," said Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante.

Now, the UC regents are poised to reverse the ban on racial preferences when they meet in mid May. The vote will be mostly symbolic — Proposition 209, will still be the law of the land — but not entirely. One component of SP-1 requires that between 50 and 75 percent of every campus's entering class be admitted "solely on the basis of academic achievement." Doing away with that requirement would give admissions officials more discretion to look at non-academic factors — which, some fear, could lead to the de facto, small-scale reinstatement of preferences. Given UC admissions officers demonstrated zeal for racial set-asides — in 1995, for example, the university confessed that three campuses, Davis, Irvine, and San Diego, were admitting every "underrepresented-minority" applicant regardless of qualifications — that concern isn't far-fetched.

The question remains: Why, amid steady increases in minority acceptances, are California's education and political leadership so receptive to demands for racial preferences? Ideology is certainly one reason, but think there's another, broader impulse at play — sloth.

With racial preferences, UC admissions officers could simply wave their hands and achieve the "correct" ethnic balance on each campus — and then pretend they'd actually done something to improve the state of education. It was a sham but it was easy and made them feel virtuous and powerful. Without preference they have had to work a lot harder — spending millions of dollars on aggressive recruiting of qualified minority students, as well as mentoring, SAT-prep, and teacher-training programs — and to be patient with gradual improvement. The fact that these measures might actually improve minority education hardly matters. With the campus Left and leading Democrats cheerleading, don't be surprised if next month the UC regents vote to take the easy way out.