Calif. offers window into race ban's impact (affirmative action)

[MonteSano]

Roxanne Winston isn't surprised she is the only black student in her chemistry class. Black students are a tiny fraction of the 23,000-student campus of the prestigious University of California at Berkeley.

What shocked the pre-med major was her classmates' hesitation at picking her as a lab partner. The way she read the looks on their faces: "They didn't think I would be able to do the work."

The demographics of California's universities have been under scrutiny since that time nearly a decade ago when Proposition 209 eliminated affirmative action in university admissions, government hiring and contracting, a similar proposal to one being put before Michigan voters next month. Today, the percentage of students who are black is about half of pre-Prop 209 levels, and Hispanic student enrollment is still disproportionately low.

.......

"People still think we get here on preferential treatment," said Winston, 19, of San Diego. "I don't know how many times I've been asked if I'm an athlete because of the color of my skin. I'm not athletic, and I know I don't look athletic."

Michigan voters next month will decide Proposal 2, a nearly identical initiative to Proposition 209, that has become one of the most divisive issues this election season.


http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061020/POLITICS01/610200387

[Hidden Stillness]

1. VOTE NO ON 2

This whole article is a fraud, as you no doubt knew when you posted it here. If you read it, you will find it refers to the huge drop in black and Hispanic students after the anti- Affirmative Action proposal, then first pretend they don't know why it happened, and then, "Where did black pupils go?" section, the article lies about it and claims black students cannot be found at UC, that they are just enrolling at other universities. This is ridiculous, and the article itself admits that after California's Prop 209, black enrollment plummeted by some 50%. The article repeats the paid propaganda that the proposal will "eliminate preferences based on race, gender, ethnicity and national origin, no matter what the immediate consequences may be." This is ridiculous; the preferences for rich white male cronies will continue, and there will be no laws to stop it. You might want to click on the link "Gender-specific public programs threatened" from the Detroit "News" article to get a further sense of the threat of this proposal. The anti-Affirmative Action millionaires from California are pushing this racial angle hoping for a response of bigoted racism against black people, when really the largest single group that has benefited from Affirmative Action legislation has been women. There are A.A. laws against discrimination based on age, disability, and many other things.

By the way, the phony-named "Michigan" "Civil Rights" Initiative group is neither Michigan nor Civil Rights, but is a heavily-bankrolled groups of California Republican millionaires. If you go to their website, it is hysterical archcon crap, with a notice to catch their Jennifer Gratz on Fox's Bill O'Reilly. That handles that. By the way, notice that on both the Detroit "Free Press" and "News" websites, there are (exclusively, that I have seen) banner ads for DeVos for Governor. One United Michigan, on the other hand, although dishonestly presented during the article as one group, is actually a huge coalition of Michigan groups, from women's and actual civil rights groups, to labor, the Governor, and even the Chamber of Commerce, etc.

All society benefits from Affirmative Action laws; only the lawless global capitalist doesn't want citizens, workers and students to have legal recourse for grievances of any kind.