California’s Democrat legislators are trying to make discrimination legal again. A bill called ACA7 seeks to go around the state’s constitutional ban on affirmative action and legalize discrimination. The state Assembly has passed the bill, and it is under consideration in the state Senate.
California’s voters passed Proposition 209 in 1996 with an overwhelming majority. The proposition banned affirmative action in the state’s Constitution and mandated that California “shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”
Less Discrimination, More Success
Democrats predicted that Prop 209 would have detrimental effects on the minorities in the state. They thought that without racial preference in college admissions, minority students’ enrollment at the University of California (UC) system would drop significantly.
The Democrats’ fearmongering didn’t come true. Research by Charles L. Geshekter, an emeritus professor of history at California State University-Chico, shows that since Prop 209’s passage, minority students’ enrollment in the UC system has increased, and their graduation rates have also improved. Geshekter credited the ban on racial preferences in college admissions with leading to a redistribution of minority students among UC campuses. More of them achieved better academic outcomes when they attended a college that “offered an apparently better match for their academic backgrounds and preparation.”
Even the Los Angeles Times had to admit that UC’s student body is more racially diverse today. For example, UC’s 2020 freshman class
