Wednesday, July 19th 2006
Regents still stuck on 209
From an AP report on today’s meeting of the UC Board of Regents:
Acting on a request from Regent Frederick Ruiz and student regent Maria Ledesma, the board decided to reconvene a task force of students, staff and faculty to look at how the university was complying with Proposition 209.
Details of the group’s new charge and a timeline for its work still have to be worked out, but several regents said they hoped it would delve more deeply into whether the initiative that required the university to abandon its traditional affirmative action programs undermined efforts to improve student diversity.
“African-Americans are disappearing from the UC at an alarming rate,” said Regent Eddie Island. “If 209 brought about this result, we ought to lay it on the table, and we ought to know it. The public ought to know it.”
The UCLA Daily Bruin has further coverage of the meeting:
Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante said the UC should look for a way to increase admissions of underrepresented minority students while still remaining inside the restraints set by Proposition 209.
“Perhaps we’ll be able to find how Proposition 209 was interpreted by the university. Is there a way to implement 209 in the university that will allow us to admit minorities along with the voters’ intent?” Bustamante said.
In other words, is there any way to screw 209 and get away with it?
Meanwhile, supporters of the proposition are in a celebratory mood:
“The 10th anniversary of Proposition 209 is cause for celebration, not consternation, because it enshrined the principle of equal rights in California law, including at the UC system,” [Pacific Legal Foundation spokesman Howard Johnson] said. “That’s Prop. 209’s bedrock rule, and any tinkering with UC admissions that would depart from that rule would be immoral and illegal.
Prop 209 is very simple: The State shall not discriminate against or give preference to anyone on account of race or gender.
In California, skin color is irrelevant.
There is nothing to discuss. Obey the law or resign your position.
Comment by Scott — 7/20/2006 @ 8:09 am
Prop 209 and Prop 187 were godsends for California. Prop 209 still has not been turned over, but unfortunately, a liberal activist judge overturned 187. Eitherway, I digress to my point. This political correctness of we have to help the “minorities” out of their so-called rut stinks of racism to me. It’s like saying: “Here, you can’t do it yourself, so have a handout.” Honestly, political correctness is the new racism and the Left loves to embrace it.
Typical Politically Correct Lefty: “‘We’ (we being anglo-liberals) have to teach ‘them’, (them being minorities) how to act and give ‘them’ a handout so they can make it in the world.” just stinks of racism. It’s like saying, because you are black/yellow/red/brown/purple with green polka-dots, because you are that particular color, you can’t make it on your own. I think its disgusting and totally dehumanizes them. The Great White Mother/Father and Lord Jim crap HAS to stop. If people don’t learn how to handle their affairs on their own, how are they ever gonna learn?
*waits for the jeers of “RACIST! RACIST!” and “BIGOT! BIGOT!”*
Comment by LostinEurope — 7/20/2006 @ 2:34 pm
Don’t worry about it. Every time, on every issue, when the Left does not get its way, it screams “racism”, “sexism”, or perhaps “Halliburton”. Pay no attention to the irrelevancy.
Racial bean counting is on its way out in this country. The Left is trying desperately to keep it, but it’s dying. Remember, adults now in their 40s grew up after the civil rights era. Younger adults in their 30s look at it as ancient history. It never affected them, and they have no memory of legal segregation. They aren’t interested in the vicimology of the 1960s.
The Left is stuck forever in 1968. The “third world”, “revolution”, “racism”, “sexism”, “women’s rights”…all of these are from an era long past. The country has moved on.
The young Leftists of today understand none of this. They use these words as a weapon against the mainstream, figuring that since THEY are terrified of these words, then everyone ELSE is, too. Well, we’re not. And that, above all, terrifies the Left. We refuse to be guilty of non-crimes and refuse to apologize for a past we didn’t create.
Just an aside, I was in grad school at Cal in the 1980s. It was the same then. Have fun while you’re here and move on. Stuck in the past is a Leftie trip, don’t make it yours.
Comment by Scott — 7/21/2006 @ 8:33 am
[…] It’s amazing that it has taken the UC Regents nearly a decade after the passage of Prop 209 to see exactly what effect the measure has had, and will have, on higher education in California. No matter which side you talk to, the results of 209 have been evident for some time. […]
Pingback by CalStuff: News. Observations » UC Regents To Study Effects of Proposition 209 — 7/22/2006 @ 9:55 pm