Last week, a group of lawless vigilantes trampled over state law
and betrayed public opinion at the same time.
For me and you, this might be a hard act to pull off. But for
the well-trained assemblymen of the state of California, it was
business as usual. Last Wednesday, in a 45-30 vote, the state
Assembly passed a bill to reinstate race as a consideration for
university admissions.
Assembly Bill 2387 allows “the University of California
and the California State University … to consider culture, race,
gender, ethnicity” and a number of other factors in their
admissions processes.
As I read it, the bill is illegal. Proposition 209, a
constitutional amendment ratified by California’s public in
1996, explicitly states: “The state shall not discriminate
against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or
group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national
origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or
public contracting.”
But the officials in Sacramento are not dumb. Their
deliberations were extensive and their methodology was efficient.
It is for this reason that AB 2387 includes the phrase, “so
long as no preference is given.”
In short, the legislators want to consider race but not make
preferences based on race. Convenient? Yes. Confusing? Surely.
Impressively manipulative? Perhaps.
But all the elitist rationalizations for this bill are left
defenseless when faced with the revealing and important question:
How?
How is it possible to consider an applicant’s race but not
make a preference based on it? One cannot expect a human to remain
uninfluenced when he considers an influential factor. For example,
if one applicant is Armenian and the other is French, I, the
subjective reviewer, will give preferential treatment to the
Armenian.
Say, however, that admissions officers are superhuman. What
then? If they were hypothetically able to consider race but not
make racial preferences, then what’s the point of considering
race in the first place? There is no point. For example, if one
applicant is Armenian and the other is French, I, the objective
reviewer, will not care.
So why is the bill so important?
To put it simply, the bill is a devious and deliberate attempt
to break the law and reinstate affirmative action in
California.
To make this all the more obvious for the political detective,
the assemblymen have exposed their motivations for passing the bill
in the first place. Those who pretend the measure is about equality
or justice ignore the fact that when the bill was first introduced
in April, it did not contain the word gender. It dealt exclusively
with the reintegration of racial issues into admission boards. From
the beginning, the bill was about affirmative action.
Again, the mob at our Capitol is not foolish.
Preempting their inevitable exposure, many assemblymen have
sought to form a legal defense, in spite of Prop. 209.
As the Daily Bruin reports: “Assemblyman Marco Firebaugh,
D-South Gate, was the primary author of the bill. Ricardo Lara,
communications director for Firebaugh, said the bill stems from a
decision by the U.S. Supreme Court last June that upheld the right
of the University of Michigan Law School to employ “˜a
narrowly tailored use of race in admissions
decisions.'”
The court did not, nor should address whether affirmative action
should be mandatory. The court’s ruling was one of the
state’s rights. Within the confines of the Constitutional
Equal Protection Clause, the individual states can choose whether
to adopt or ignore affirmative action.
Michigan chose to adopt it; California chose to reject it (via
Proposition 209). And precisely for the same reasons affirmative
action exists in Michigan, it should not exist in California. The
state has the right to choose. That is what the Michigan case
found.
In her ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice O’Connor
writes, “As the experience in Texas, Florida and California
demonstrates, public universities have ample race-neutral means
available to achieve objectives such as educational diversity,
openness and broad participation. … (States like California)
cannot follow Michigan’s model of adopting race-based
admission policies when ample race-neutral alternatives remain
available to respondents.”
So the Supreme Court, far from endorsing race as a factor of
admissions, actually rejected it in the case of California.
Diane Schachterle, the Director of Public Affairs for the
American Civil Rights Coalition, agrees. In an e-mail, she told me,
“Grutter v. Bollinger specifies that if race-neutral means
are working, then race-based policies may NOT be used. Since
Justice O’Connor singled out California as a shining example
of the success of race-neutral policies one can conclude that
California meets this legal test and is forbidden to consider
race.”
Much can be said about the righteousness of affirmative action.
But the issue at hand is far different and far more important. It
is an issue of law and public opinion.
Last week, our representatives gathered in their elite room
where they overrode our desires, breached their sacred contract
with the law, and misled and deceived California citizens. In the
process, they insulted the opponents of affirmative action and
crushed the legitimacy of its advocates.
The assemblymen who voted for this bill are, in the most literal
sense, vigilantes.
Does anybody care?
Hovannisian is a first-year history and philosophy student.
E-mail him at ghovannisian@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.