California Asian-Americans show strength in blocking affirmative action revival

[alp227]

Source: San Jose Mercury News

Stunned by an unexpected uprising within their party's minority base, Democratic lawmakers on Monday dropped a push to reverse California's 16-year-old ban on affirmative action in college admissions.

Constitutional Amendment 5 -- which would have put the issue before voters -- cleared the state Senate in late January on a party-line vote. But as word of the bill spread, so did resistance, mostly from families concerned that race-conscious admission policies would unfairly disadvantage Asian applicants to the intensely competitive University of California system and its flagship campuses, Berkeley and UCLA.

The strong opposition and quick success of a relatively small and reliably Democratic ethnic group -- 14 percent of the state's population in 2012 -- revealed a new political strength.

The bill's rapid demise culminated with about-face by three Asian-American senators who voted for the bill in January. And its author, Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina, is making no promises about its revival.

Read more: http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_25363174/california-asian-americans-show-strength-blocking-affirmative-action

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Legislative analysis of this law here; full text of the law here.

I'm an Asian-American in the Golden State and am torn about this issue. The evidence I've seen shows that graduation rates for Latino and black UC/CSU students went up post-209 despite overall enrollment for such groups going down since 209 (pp 6-7 in my link). But what we've gotta accomplish is a way to compromise diversity and meritocracy and defeat the zero-sum fallacy among the anti-SCA5 crowd.

[cosmicone]

1. As an Asian-American from California

I hear what you are saying because I felt the same way. Since California has never been blatantly racist like Mississippi or Alabama and since it is already quite diverse, some new way to balance diversity and meritocracy must be found. We definitely need more Latino and African-American students enrolled. Perhaps expanding the campuses would make the pie bigger and California can use more graduates.

[cprise]

2. A bigger pie... if you can undo Reagan's legacy. n/t

[Throd]

3. What the hell?

"Since California has never been blatantly racist like Mississippi or Alabama" Actually, I think it has.

Where does one start with a history of racial/ethnic/class injustice concerning California?

[reddread]

4. sundown towns, farmworker deaths, chavez hatred, internment camps, rampant racism and classism

this isnt about the strength of one segment, its about the weakness of the sentiment.
the demographics will have the last word, but there are many competing interests and underserved populations deserving
of some protection and recognition. not just neglect and discrimination.
phoney liberalism fronts dont eracism.
christ almighty, from san diego to oakland and all parts elsewhere.
its a bad scene.
im so surprised.

[DreamGypsy]

5. ...and should we forget the Native Americans...

... many travesties and massacres preceded the Gold Rush, but ...

The human and environmental costs of the Gold Rush were substantial. Native Americans, dependent on traditional hunting, gathering and agriculture, became the victims of starvation, as gravel, silt and toxic chemicals from prospecting operations killed fish and destroyed habitats. The surge in the mining population also resulted in the disappearance of game and food gathering locales as gold camps and other settlements were built amidst them. Later farming spread to supply the camps, taking more land from the use of Native Americans.

Native Americans also succumbed in large numbers to introduced diseases such as smallpox, influenza and measles. Some estimates indicate case fatality rates of 80–90% in Native American populations during smallpox epidemics. By far the most destructive element of the Gold Rush on California Indians was the violence practiced on them and their environment by miners and settlers. Miners often saw Native Americans as impediments to their mining activities. Retribution attacks on solitary miners could result in larger scale attacks against Native populations, for example, the Bridge Gulch Massacre; these reprisals often targeted tribes or villages unconnected with the original act.

The Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, passed on April 22, 1850 by the California Legislature, allowed settlers to continue the Californio practice of capturing and using Native people as bonded workers. It also provided the basis for the enslavement and trafficking in Native American labor, particularly that of young women and children, which was carried on as a legal business enterprise. Native American villages were regularly raided to supply the demand, and young women and children were carried off to be sold, the men and remaining people often being killed in genocidal attacks. According to the government of California, some 4,500 Native Americans suffered violent deaths between 1849 and 1870.

In some areas, systematic attacks against tribespeople in or near mining districts occurred. Despite resistance in various conflicts, the Native American population in California, estimated at 150,000 in 1845, had dropped to less than 30,000 by 1870. (The pre-European population of Native Americans, estimated at 300,000, had already been decimated, almost exclusively due to diseases carried by the Spanish settlers.) The factors of disease, however do not minimize the tone of racial violence directed towards California Indians. Peter Burnett, California's first governor declared that California was a battleground between the races and that there were only two options towards California Indians, extinction or removal. California, apart from legalizing slavery for Native Americans also directly paid out $25,000 in bounties for Indian scalps with varying prices for adult male, adult female and child sizes. California with a consortium of other new Western states stood in opposition of ratifying the eighteen treaties signed between tribal leaders and federal agents in 1851.

[alp227]

8. The internment camps were by the feds

Can't really blame CA.

[reddread]

11. whoa, you got me

Just a thread in a tapestry.
You think the Japanese Americans didnt face prejudice before and after?
do ya?

[Brother Buzz]

15. California Attorney General, Earl Warren orchestrated the whole thing- he made it happen

and he was rewarded by being elected Governor. He grew to hate his involvement, but like they say, you can't put toothpaste back in the tube.

"since deeply regretted the removal order and my own testimony advocating it, because it was not in keeping with our American concept of freedom and the rights of citizens...Whenever I thought of the innocent little children who were torn from home, school friends, and congenial surroundings, I was conscience-stricken...t was wrong to react so impulsively, without positive evidence of disloyalty" —The Memoirs of Earl Warren (1977)

[reddread]

16. racism in CA an ongoing concern, and there are those who cannot forget

http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/03/21/3834942/defend-our-civil-liberties.html

[BumRushDaShow]

6. "Since California has never been blatantly racist like Mississippi or Alabama"

See Watts (1965) & Compton (1992). Also see Oakland, CA (aka the assassination at Fruitvale Station)... and on and on....

[Nanjing to Seoul]

7. Don't say that. Some Southerner will not like and alert your post for bashing the south

Pointing out that the Klan started there and they have a long history of bad race relations (including SLAVERY) means nothing.

Southerners are touchy people.

[Gormy Cuss]

17. Gee, those sensitive Southerners are nowhere in the thread

at least at the time I'm posting this.

Who is here to counter that? Fellow Californians.

[CreekDog]

19. might as well offend Southerners at this point...

since you've pretty much offended everyone else here...

[Xithras]

9. Uh, you DO realize that there are ACTIVE KKK chapters in the Central Valley, right?

And that, from the 1970's until just two years ago, three Central Valley counties were under DoJ Voting Rights Act monitoring because of their histories of racially discriminatory voting practices...the very same monitoring that southern counties and states have to endure. In 2012 Merced County managed to get out from under the monitoring, so we apparently only have TWO counties being monitored now.

Hell, back in the 1980's there was a KKK grand dragon living in Tracy, California, right on the doorstep of the SF Bay Area. When I was a kid in Modesto in the late 70's/early 80's, it was just considered a fact of life that there was a "white side" of town and a "Mexican side" of town, and that nobody of the "wrong race" could buy or rent a home on the "wrong side" of that imaginary line. There are STILL small towns in the Gold Country where that kind of thinking persists.

And just two years ago a cross was set on fire on the lawn of a mixed race woman in Arroyo Grande.

California doesn't have a history of being "blatantly racist"? Never forget that SF and LA only occupy a tiny portion of this huge state.

[reddread]

12. "you have been visited by the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan"

you are absolutely right. the Klan is alive and sick in the head throughout California, but certainly in the Valley.
Ive met many of them, in many different circumstances.
Leaving a sticker that read that on my mother's office door and then tearing off in a pickup truck as we tried to catch up to them.
Theres a HVAC company in Fresno, or there was. NALK is the company name.

[cosmicone]

13. I didn't say California has NO racism

just that it was comparatively much less than in places like Mississippi and Alabama.

[reddread]

14. by what fraction of a decimel? n/t

[mackerel]

18. gtew up in Lodi just up the street from you.

it was very very true back then but seriously even Lodi has changed

[KamaAina]

10. With strength like that, who needs weakness?

True to form, the repukes are looking to capitalize on this.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024663049#post13

If passed by the Legislature and then by state voters, Senate Constitutional Amendment 5 would jeopardize their children's chances of being admitted to state universities, opponents told more than 150 people gathered at a "Stop SCA 5" forum at the Cupertino Community Center.

"It would be a serious mistake to let the Latino caucus secure the vote of all Democrats," said Ward Connerly, author of Proposition 209, which SCA 5 would overturn. Connerly's proposition outlawed consideration of race in University of California and California State University admissions. He called SCA 5 "a violation of all democratic principles."...

"I guarantee you the number of Asians will be diminished and the number of Latinos will be increased" if SCA 5 passes, said Connerly. "That's the whole objective."...

Sensing the potential political gain in this issue, the top GOP leaders of both chambers addressed the session, which was conducted in Mandarin and English.