(CA) Affirmative action suit gets Brown's support

[alp227]

More than 15 years after California voters approved a ban on affirmative action based on race or gender preferences, a new challenge to Proposition 209 has reached a federal appeals court - and the challengers this time include Gov. Jerry Brown.

Prop. 209 "imposes unique political burdens on minorities" and violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection, Brown's lawyers from the attorney general's office told the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which will hear arguments Feb. 13.

The suit was filed in 2010 by 46 minority students and an advocacy group. Brown was originally a defendant, but he has switched sides, joining the plaintiffs, who are seeking to allow consideration of race in admissions at the University of California. The suit does not challenge Prop. 209's bans of race and gender as a consideration in public employee hiring practices and contracting, but a ruling striking down any part of the November 1996 ballot measure would make all of it vulnerable.

Brown has also argued against the constitutionality of Prop. 8, the 2008 initiative that banned same-sex marriage, now awaiting review by another Ninth Circuit panel. As in that case, his stance on Prop. 209 has left defense of the measure to its sponsor, an organization led by former UC Regent Ward Connerly.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/16/BAG01MQ7P3.DTL

The tough question: where is the racial discrimination in meritocracy? I'm disappointed that Brown changed sides on this issue.

[TigerToMany]

1. Good news

I'm going to be looking for developments on this in the future.

[pinto]

2. I think it's worth another look. As the author notes -

The other significant factor, Prop. 209's opponents argue, is the measure's impact on UC enrollment: a 50 percent drop in admissions of Latinos, African Americans and Native Americans in the first year of its enforcement.

The university responded with steps designed to maintain diversity, such as giving preferences to low-income applicants, giving less weight to standardized test scores and admitting the top 4 percent from every California high school. But the plaintiffs say there has been little progress: The same three minority groups make up nearly half of the state's high school graduates but only one-fourth of UC students.

Allowing racial-minority status to be a plus factor in admissions is "the only practical way to overcome the consequences of de facto segregation and inequality" reflected in the enrollment figures, the plaintiffs' lawyers told the court.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/16/BAG01MQ7P3.DTL

[msongs]

3. visit any UC campus and you will quickly see the racial/ethnic balance nt

[Spider Jerusalem]

4. The answer to what is unfortunately not a tough question but a stupid one:

the racial discrimination in so-called meritocracy lies in the overall social and economic inequalities between groups that affect average outcomes for members of those groups. If the average black or Latino or Native American student came from the same socioeconomic background as the average white or Asian student, and had the opportunity to go to a good school, then it would be a genuine meritocracy; as it is, it's nothing of the kind. Some people don't actually realise their advantages, I suppose.

[musiclawyer]

5. I"ll put it this way

If you are black or brown kids, you probably have two very big hurdles that many other non black and non brown kids have: 1) you have zero or almost zero parental expectation to perform in school and 2) you live in an area where your public school woefully underprepares you for university work. There are exceptions of course. But I stand by the general rule. You might add a third prong: your parents have no money to send you to private school.

Heck, my kids went to a rural HS school that was considered "good" and had above average standardized scores. Maybe 5% minority. My daughter got into Wash U St Louis where she said most of the kids are 1%ers . She now considers the HS that she attended a joke because it did not prepare her for the rigor of real school work. Fortunately, she's a smart cookie and is thriving.

[Spider Jerusalem]

6. Not just parental expectations, either; peer-group expectations as well

it's another unfortunate hurdle for a lot of black and brown kids that members of their peer group will accuse them of "trying to be white" if they perform well academically.

[hughee99]

10. But while the preference is based on race, the differences are in the socio-economic background.

Michael Jordan's son would get a preference over a Caucasian or Asian child from a poor community. I'd prefer a system that gives advantages based on social and economic inequalities rather than just skin color. It's a huge benefit to those from minority groups in more affluent neighborhoods and not as targeted toward the intended beneficiaries as it could be, IMHO.

[MellowDem]

7. Is affirmative action effective?

We've had it in place for a while now, and the inequalities are all still there, if not worse.

As far as I can tell, it has failed miserably as a policy to create equal opportunities, mainly because by the time college comes, it's far too late to be giving out opportunities, the damage has been done. It's addressing the wrong end of the problem.

It seems to distract from the far bigger problem that is creating these unequal opportunities from birth. Concentrated poverty. Until that is fixed, it's hard to see how racial affirmative action will do much besides be fodder for conservatives and be used as a sort of punching bag by them since it hasn't worked to improve the condition of minorities.

Part of it is just cultural as well, and that's hard to address in any way by the government. I don't know that it can be.

[Igel]

8. Not as effective as the numbers touted would indicate.

They focus on percentage of students attending school, not the numbers of graduates or the time to graduation.

I was at a UC school before Prop 209 and saw the admissions, time-to-degree, graduation rate numbers. If you were a minority candidate you were much more likely to be in the bottom 25% or even 10% of the incoming class. You graduated at far lower rates. Then if you looked at the numbers, you saw that the graduation rates for whites/E.Asians was 4 years (5 years in the year or two just before Prop 209) while the graduation rates for minorities were for 6 year graduation times. So you graduated at far lower rates, but that factored in those who took 5 or 6 years.

Factor in the tutoring and grant-based aid and the whites/E.Asians had a more expensive time.

The graduation rates were a kind of institutional secret, a massive embarrassment. The #s were both pathetic, manipulated to be as large as possible, and pathetically small. Esp. bad if you were non-white/E.Asian and male.

The final irritating factor was the distribution of minorities: Some programs had a large enrollment of blacks, or SE Asians, or AIPAC, or Latinos, while other programs had similarly low enrollment. They clustered in programs whose graduates went into low-paying jobs.

Concentrated poverty is a problem. However, there are two things to say about it. First, it's to a large extent a chicken-and-egg problem. We assume poverty is the primary factor (or race). It might be something else entirely, one with a better connection to educational outcome by kids. The second is that there's a large enough cohort of blacks and Latinos that *aren't* in "concentrated" or "persistent" poverty to populate most of these college programs at sufficient numbers. The affirmative-action non-sufficiency that Prop 209 layered on top of relied not on blacks and Latinos in deep poverty but working class and middle class blacks and Latinos with no college. Meanwhile, a large proportion of the whites/E. Asians came from families with parents with college credit. Look at the graduation rates of whites with low-education-level parents and you get crappy drop-out rates too--not as bad as black and Latino drop-out rates, but still really bad.

[MellowDem]

9. Well, I wasn't referring to the graduation rates...

which are poor, but the fact that minorities as a whole are still just as worse off. Hence my reference to concentrated poverty. The numbers haven't changed.

And you bring up a good point that I've always wondered about. Namely, that racial affirmative action mainly helps minorities from a middle class background because of all the opportunities their better finances gives them, allowing them to qualify over poorer minorities, which doesn't exactly address some of the root issue. Not that it would matter if they can't succeed in college by that time, due to all of the disadvantages from birth.

Concentrated poverty is a byproduct of historical discrimination and racism, and it is taking a very long time to break it up. Public housing is trying to do this, but it's a slow and contentious process, with plenty of bigots in the suburbs being scared to holy hell to have even 10 public housing units moving into their community of 10,000. At least if they live in more affluent communities, they will have access to more opportunities.

[bemildred]

11. Merit is the result of learning, not the prerequisite.

The prerequisite for learning is a good attitude and willingness to work.