The Corner

Politics & Policy

Re: Is California Backsliding on Racial Preferences?

To follow up on my post from yesterday, if the California Assembly is so concerned about underrepresentation of black and Hispanic students in the University of California system that they must resort to the use of racial preferences, they could instead open up thousands of spots to make it more likely for black and Hispanic students to be admitted without resort to racial discrimination.

According to UC’s own statistics, in the fall of 2019, there were 29,754 international students enrolled in the undergraduate programs of the UC system. That’s more than triple the number of black undergraduates (9,371) in the UC system. If the powers that be in California are so concerned about having more black and Hispanic kids enrolled in the UC system, why don’t they first try reducing the huge number of foreign students a bit before discriminating against Asian Americans and white Americans? (Just kidding. You know why).

Incidentally, you’d never know it from the California Assembly, but fewer whites are enrolled as undergraduates in the UC system (48,433) than Hispanics (55,971). Whites are only 24 percent of enrolled non-foreign undergraduates, whereas Hispanics are 28 percent of enrolled non-foreign undergraduates.

Peter Kirsanow — Peter N. Kirsanow is an attorney and a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights.
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