The Golden State Warriors, San Francisco Giants and 49ers and Oakland Athletics urged voters to support the referendum, Proposition 16, and remove “systemic barriers.” A commercial noted that Kamala Harris, then a U.S. senator, had endorsed the campaign, and the ad also suggested that to oppose it was to side with white supremacy. Supporters raised many millions of dollars for the referendum and outspent opponents by 19 to 1.
“Vote for racial justice!” urged the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
None of these efforts persuaded Jimmie Romero, a 63-year-old barber who grew up in the working-class Latino neighborhood of Wilmington in Los Angeles. Homelessness, illegal dumping, spiraling rents: He sat in his shop and listed so many problems.
Affirmative action was not one of those.
“I was upset that they tried to push that,” Mr. Romero recalled in a recent interview. “It was not what matters.”
Mr. Romero was one of millions of California voters, including about half who are Hispanic and a majority who are Asian American, who voted against Proposition 16, which would have restored race-conscious admissions at public universities, and in government hiring and contracting.
The breadth of that rejection shook supporters. California is a liberal bastion and one of the most diverse states in the country. That year, President Biden swamped Donald Trump by 29 percentage points in California, but Proposition 16 went down, with 57 percent of voters opposing it.
That vote constitutes more than just a historical curiosity. The U.S. Supreme Court is soon expected to rule against, or limit, affirmative action in college admissions, which the court supported for decades. (...)
The No Vote: ‘Why Do We Need This?’
Gloria Romero, a Democrat and former majority leader of the State Senate, was term-limited and left politics in 2010 out of frustration with the poor health of public education and her party’s opposition to charter schools.
Ten years later, she voted against affirmative action.
“Why are we going back to the past?” she said. “We’re no longer in a ‘walk over the bridge in Selma’ phase of our civil rights struggle.”
Like many Hispanic voters interviewed, Ms. Romero worried less about blatant discrimination and more about health care, education and housing.
The Hispanic populations is at an inflection point in California, progress vying with lingering disparity. Slightly more than half of public school students are Hispanic, and the percentage of Hispanic undergraduates in the elite University of California system is roughly half that. The well-regarded if less competitive California State system has 23 four-year campuses and almost 460,000 students, and those who are Hispanic make up almost half of the total.
“We’re debating affirmative action when we have more Latinos than ever in college,” Ms. Romero said. (...)
Valerie Contreras, a crane operator, is a proud union member and civic leader in Wilmington, where half the voters were against the referendum. She had little use for the affirmative action campaign.
“It was ridiculous all the racially loaded terms Democrats used,” she said. “It was a distraction from the issues that affect our lives.”
Asian voters spoke of visceral unease. South and East Asians make up just 15 percent of the state population, and 35 percent of the undergraduates in the University of California system.
Affirmative action, to their view, upends traditional measures of merit — grades, test scores and extracurricular activities — and threatens to reduce their numbers. (...)
Kevin Liao, a consultant and former top Democratic Party aide, supported the affirmative action referendum, arguing it would help Asian American small businesses and was the only way universities could deliver diverse classes. High-achieving Asian students will succeed, he said, even if they settle for third or fourth choices in colleges.
He was not surprised, however, that many Asian Americans balked. “The notion that you would look at anything other than pure academic performance is seen by immigrants as antithetical to American values,” he said.
by By Michael Powell and Ilana Marcus, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Voters. Jim Wilson/The New York Times
None of these efforts persuaded Jimmie Romero, a 63-year-old barber who grew up in the working-class Latino neighborhood of Wilmington in Los Angeles. Homelessness, illegal dumping, spiraling rents: He sat in his shop and listed so many problems.
Affirmative action was not one of those.
“I was upset that they tried to push that,” Mr. Romero recalled in a recent interview. “It was not what matters.”
Mr. Romero was one of millions of California voters, including about half who are Hispanic and a majority who are Asian American, who voted against Proposition 16, which would have restored race-conscious admissions at public universities, and in government hiring and contracting.
The breadth of that rejection shook supporters. California is a liberal bastion and one of the most diverse states in the country. That year, President Biden swamped Donald Trump by 29 percentage points in California, but Proposition 16 went down, with 57 percent of voters opposing it.
That vote constitutes more than just a historical curiosity. The U.S. Supreme Court is soon expected to rule against, or limit, affirmative action in college admissions, which the court supported for decades. (...)
The No Vote: ‘Why Do We Need This?’
Gloria Romero, a Democrat and former majority leader of the State Senate, was term-limited and left politics in 2010 out of frustration with the poor health of public education and her party’s opposition to charter schools.
Ten years later, she voted against affirmative action.
“Why are we going back to the past?” she said. “We’re no longer in a ‘walk over the bridge in Selma’ phase of our civil rights struggle.”
Like many Hispanic voters interviewed, Ms. Romero worried less about blatant discrimination and more about health care, education and housing.
The Hispanic populations is at an inflection point in California, progress vying with lingering disparity. Slightly more than half of public school students are Hispanic, and the percentage of Hispanic undergraduates in the elite University of California system is roughly half that. The well-regarded if less competitive California State system has 23 four-year campuses and almost 460,000 students, and those who are Hispanic make up almost half of the total.
“We’re debating affirmative action when we have more Latinos than ever in college,” Ms. Romero said. (...)
Valerie Contreras, a crane operator, is a proud union member and civic leader in Wilmington, where half the voters were against the referendum. She had little use for the affirmative action campaign.
“It was ridiculous all the racially loaded terms Democrats used,” she said. “It was a distraction from the issues that affect our lives.”
Asian voters spoke of visceral unease. South and East Asians make up just 15 percent of the state population, and 35 percent of the undergraduates in the University of California system.
Affirmative action, to their view, upends traditional measures of merit — grades, test scores and extracurricular activities — and threatens to reduce their numbers. (...)
Kevin Liao, a consultant and former top Democratic Party aide, supported the affirmative action referendum, arguing it would help Asian American small businesses and was the only way universities could deliver diverse classes. High-achieving Asian students will succeed, he said, even if they settle for third or fourth choices in colleges.
He was not surprised, however, that many Asian Americans balked. “The notion that you would look at anything other than pure academic performance is seen by immigrants as antithetical to American values,” he said.
by By Michael Powell and Ilana Marcus, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Voters. Jim Wilson/The New York Times
