A Minority Within a Minority

One year ago this week, the regents of the University of California voted to scrap the use of race and gender in admissions, contracting and hiring. The implied message was that equal opportunity existed for all and the time had come to restore the principles of “equality and fairness” at the university.

Politics played a major role in the regents’ decision, most participants and observers that day acknowledge. The passage of time as well as the actions of those involved have since clarified the dynamics at work here.

The two protagonists last July were a governor seeking to launch an ultimately failed presidential campaign and a political crony of the governor who was uniquely positioned to call for the end of any consideration of race in the UC system.

Ward Connerly, the self-appointed spokesman for the regents on this matter, proved to be the perfect foil for Pete Wilson, and vice versa. Connerly, appointed by the governor, describes himself as living proof that a black man can become a success on his own merit, without any help from affirmative action. He steadfastly maintains that since he has succeeded, anyone can.

If you accept the notion that equal opportunity exists in our state, then of course all should be treated the same in regard to UC admissions, hiring and contracting. The governor and a majority of regents came to this simple conclusion. But those who believe in simple answers to complex issues perhaps do not understand this issue--or do not want to.

I am a beneficiary of the opportunity provided me by the university’s affirmative action program. My children will not need any preference on the basis of their race. They have had and will continue to have opportunities for the best education and resources the public schools have to offer. Perhaps it is to children like mine that Wilson and Connerly refer when talking about equal opportunity. I agree that children accorded opportunity and resources such as my own should not be entitled to UC admissions preference. But children such as mine represent a small minority of black and brown children in California.

The UC eligibility rate for high school graduates of Asian descent is 32.4%; for whites, 12.7%. The rate for blacks is only 5.1% and for Latinos only 3.9%. These figures alone should have given the regents pause in voting to shut the door of opportunity on a significant portion of our population.

Instead, those voting to abolish race as a factor pointed to socioeconomic status as a better basis for preference than race. After all, a large percentage of blacks and browns are from low socioeconomic status, so that must be the real evil. But although income directly correlates to higher test scores, blacks from the highest socioeconomic grouping (with family incomes of more than $60,000) scored lower on college entrance exams than whites and Asians from the lowest socioeconomic group (less than $20,000). So something else must have been going on to justify the votes of the majority of regents.

That other thing was Ward Connerly. Apparently, that a black man objected so strenuously to black students being stigmatized as less qualified because of the preference they received carried the day.

What the regents did, in effect, was to send a clear message to those black and brown students that they would henceforth not be welcome at the University of California. If I were given the choice between suffering the stigma of not being perceived as equal by my classmates or not being admitted at all, the choice would be quite clear: I’d rather be admitted. The parents of those students and the students themselves have told me on many occasions that that is how they perceive the regents’ action.

Perhaps most disturbing about this perceived message is that virtually all of the students whom the regents have legislated against are eligible for UC admission. In attempting to justify their vote last year, some regents seemed be saying that UC was pulling ineligible students off the streets of South-Central Los Angeles and turning away eligible students. What nonsense. The state’s Master Plan for Higher Education calls for UC to choose from among the top 12.5% of graduating high school seniors, but they are not necessarily admitted to the campus of their choice.

My alma mater, Berkeley, exemplifies the difficulties of admissions fairness. Of the total 25,100 applicants for this year’s fall semester, Berkeley admitted 9,033, projecting acceptances from 3,470. If admissions were based strictly on merit (grades and test scores), which is not the case at any major U.S. university, Berkeley would have had to choose from among 10,801 students with grade point averages of 4.0 or higher to offer 9,033 admissions. Certainly any of the 10,801 students with GPAs of 4.0 who might have been denied admission would complain that Berkeley’s admission process was unfair. Instead, Berkeley and the other UC campuses have used a process in which grades and test scores are weighted most heavily but other factors are considered, such as preference for California residents, extracurricular activities, geographic preference, low socioeconomic status and race.

I have spent the past year at regents’ meetings with Connerly, read his various pronouncements in the press and find that the person who emerges is different from the principled advocate Connerly holds himself out to be. Connerly states that race is largely irrelevant in America today, yet he has taken up the fight for fairness for whites and Asians. He feels that Americans as decent people want to do the right thing, that the nation has come a long way since slavery and that citizens should be allowed to say, as Connerly put it, “We have done all that we’re going to do to level the playing field with regard to race.”

These are the words of a man whose mentor, Pete Wilson, sponsored a bill requiring every city and county to include a “housing element”--a formal proposal for new and existing residential units--in its general plan. Connerly worked for the Assembly Housing Committee in 1968, when Wilson was chairman. Today, Connerly & Associates, the firm Connerly and his wife founded in 1973, specializes in writing housing elements. Connerly has therefore found his niche--one created by Wilson.

Connerly and his 14 employees help local governments satisfy a state bureaucracy that he helped establish. For their services, clients pay up to $450 an hour. If I were in Connerly’s position, I too might believe that the race card is largely irrelevant and had nothing to do with my successful position.

It has not gone unnoticed that the regents’ affirmative action decision was merely part of a larger plan for passage of the California Civil Rights Initiative, of which Connerly is the campaign chairman.

The regents are entrusted with stewardship of one of California’s crown jewels, the University of California. Given that politics plays such a significant role in the decisions of the regents, we should take a hard look at how they are chosen. The people of this state deserve no less.