Did the Regents Undermine Prop 16?

The Mercury News carries an article - see below - about concerns of Asian-American parents concerning Prop 16 (which would end the ban on affirmative action under Prop 209). At the same time, a PPIC poll suggests its chances of enactment are poor.*

The Regents took two actions - which can be seen as interrelated - recently. One was to endorse Prop 16. They could alternatively have stayed silent. The other action was to drop use of the SAT and ACT. The latter decision was contrary to a recommendation in a faculty report the Regents themselves had commissioned. They could have simply accepted the faculty recommendation or just postponed the issue.

Former Governor Brown used to say that not every problem needs a law. Similarly, not every controversial issue or ballot proposition needs an opinion from the Regents. Perhaps there are cases where less is more, and this may have been one of them. Just a thought...

Here is the Mercury News piece: (excerpt)

Six years ago, when California lawmakers mounted a campaign to repeal the state’s ban on affirmative action in college admissions, Chinese American opponents of the proposal flooded lawmakers with calls, emails and petitions. Their campaign, mobilized on the group messaging app WeChat and in Chinese-language media, was successful, and the constitutional amendment died in the Legislature.

This year, a better-organized effort to repeal the ban has put Proposition 16 on California’s November ballot. It’s an even broader initiative that would reverse the measure approved by voters in 1996 banning any consideration of race and gender in public college admissions, as well as other government functions such as hiring and contracting. The initiative’s supporters have dwarfed their opponents in fundraising and endorsements, but a poll released this week found Proposition 16 is trailing badly among voters.

One potential factor: Proponents of affirmative action are once again facing vocal resistance from some Asian American families — in particular, from more conservative recent Chinese American immigrants — who fear it will mean fewer spots for their children at top University of California schools.

“The opposition is fixated on higher education,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a UC Riverside professor who studies Asian American political attitudes.

Members of the No on 16 campaign, which has held car parades and rallies in several East Bay and Peninsula suburbs and picketed outside the Los Gatos headquarters of Netflix after founder Reed Hastings’ wife donated $1 million to the Yes side, downplayed the importance of college admissions in interviews.

“Everyone knows that in the Asian community, that their kids have to be very, very good to get into a good college — that’s an open secret,” said Frank Xu, a San Diego IT consultant and member of the No campaign who came to the United States from China in 2005. “Proposition 16 will make it worse, but that’s not the biggest concern.”

Instead, Saga Conroy, another member of the opposition who immigrated to the United States from China in 2009, said she and other first-generation immigrants oppose affirmative action because it offends their more traditional notions of America as a land of equal opportunity, where anyone can make it if they work hard. The proposition’s supporters say that has never been the American reality and that systemic racism means that a level playing field is a myth. Conroy and others in the No campaign, which calls itself Californians for Equal Rights, disagree.

“California is so diverse, and we (treat) everyone equally,” she said. For immigrants, “Prop 16 doesn’t fit into their American journey.”

Still, Sunny Shao, a doctoral candidate who works with Ramakrishnan and tracks political activity on WeChat, said concerns about college admissions are “the main mobilizer” against Proposition 16 on the wildly popular platform. And nationwide, Asian Americans have similarly been on the front lines of fights against affirmative action programs at Ivy League colleges and top New York City high schools.

At 20.5 percent, Asian American students had the highest admission rates at UC Berkeley last year, compared to 17.9 percent of White students, 14.4 percent of Latinx students and 11.6 percent of Black students. A similar pattern held at UCLA.

Black and Latinx admission rates to Berkeley and UCLA, the system’s most selective campuses, plummeted after California’s ban on affirmative action 22 years ago.

In the zero-sum world of college admissions — where an acceptance letter for one student means rejection for another — affirmative action opponents worry that increasing the number of Black and Latinx students will by definition mean fewer White and Asian students will make it in...

Full article at https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/09/17/proposition-16-why-some-asian-americans-are-on-the-front-lines-of-the-campaign-against-affirmative-action/

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*https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/ppic-statewide-survey-californians-and-their-government-september-2020.pdf (p. 10)

Note: There used to be folk wisdom among politicos in California that a proposition on a controversial subject was in trouble unless it got something like 60% support BEFORE the campaign began. Starting with 47% no and 31% yes is not promising to say the least. Of course, we won't know until Election Day.

Another element to consider from a different PPIC publication is the profile of likely voters in the state (as of September 2020):

Source: https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/JTF_LikelyVotersJTF.pdf