Quote:California legislators have decided that universities and government agencies should be using racial- and gender-based quotas in admissions and hiring. California voters will be the last line of defense.

The California Assembly has passed Assembly Constitutional Amendment 5, which would repeal Proposition 209 — California’s ban on racial preferences. Proposition 209 passed in 1996, with 54% of Californians deciding that race- and sex-based affirmative action was no longer acceptable in the state. Now, ACA 5 has passed the Assembly, 60-14. Next, it heads to the California Senate, which will likely pass it as well.

California’s statewide ballot proposition statement ensures one final fail-safe in this process. If the Senate passes ACA 5 by June 25, it will be put to voters on their November ballot. A 2014 poll of registered California voters found that more than 65% supported affirmative action, but that same year, a push led primarily by Asian American voters killed a similar effort. Three state senators, including now-U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu, reversed their positions under pressure.

This year’s repeal is even more aggressive than the 2014 version. It would extend affirmative action to government hiring and contracting. It will also be more difficult to fend off in the current climate, as the authors of the bill have said themselves.

“We’re going to make sure that ACA 5 gets on the ballot in November 2020, in the middle of an international awakening about the role bias, implicit and explicit, has played on our world, country, and state,” co-sponsor Sen. Holly Mitchell said.

It’s tough to know if the repeal will even get a fair shot; supporters of a 2018 gas tax repeal accused the state of wording the proposition poorly on purpose because California Democrats wanted the gas tax to survive intact.

The last thing the country needs is to begin inflaming racial divides by offering government jobs and college admissions based on race, especially from the most populous state in the union. California Democrats, in their effort to be the flag-bearers of American progressivism, are causing the Golden State to regress. California voters might represent the last chance to stop it in November.

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Quote:In a special meeting, the University of California regents threw its unanimous support behind a proposal to repeal the state’s constitutional amendment forbidding affirmative action.

The move to undo the California Civil Rights Initiative, or Prop 209, which California voters passed in 1996 with 54.5% of the vote, comes on the heels of weeks of protest and, in some cases, riots that have engulfed American cities. The unrest was triggered by the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died at the hands of a white Minneapolis officer who knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

Now, the state legislature is moving on a bill that would allow special preferences for race, ethnicity and sex when it comes to state employment and, by extension, admission to California’s prestigious university system. That bill has passed the Assembly and could be put before voters this November.

The passage of Prop 209 has been blamed for a decline in minority representation on U-Cal campuses.

“The original sin of this country has to be addressed,” regent Eloy Ortiz Oakley said. “This is our opportunity to right a historical wrong.”

UC President Janet Napolitano also backs the proposal, as do most of the various faculty and student bodies at the 10 campuses that comprise the University of California system.

Some of Ms. Napolitano’s predecessors have acknowledged the system’s admission process already skews unfairly against Asian-American applicants. If it did not, the entire class at UC Berkeley, the premier campus in the chain, would be entirely Asian-American, former President Robert C. Dynes said in an explosive comment in 2004.

At present, show Asian-American still comprise some 33% of the system’s undergraduate and graduate students, while accounting for 15% of state residents. White make up 21% of UC students and 37% of the population, while Latinos appear the most underrepresented as they comprise 22% of UC students but 39% of state residents, the largest single groups.

African-Americans make up 6% of California’s residents but only 4% of the UC student population, according to state and census figures.

The Cal-State constellation of schools, whose 23 campuses comprise the second rung of the state’s public higher education system, have student bodies that are “nearly 75% people of color,” according to an Associated Press account this week.

“Proposition 209 has forced California public institutions to try to address racial inequality without factoring in race, even where allowed by federal law,” Ms. Napolitano said. “The diversity of our university and higher-education institutions across California should - and must - represent the rich diversity of our state.”

Should the Civil Rights Initiative repeal pass the state senate and be approved by voters on Nov. 3, the UC Regents would need to determine how to implement a new system of affirmative action. Those details were not discussed Monday, according to multiple reports.

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So the way to combat racism, is with racism?

No Justice, No Peace!