Since when did the word 'racist' change meanings? Sure, prop 209 could be characterized as having a disproportionate impact; but racist? As MB pointed out with regard to the moot court incident, racism requires intent. Affirmative action could be characterized more fairly (although still not very fairly at all) as racist than prop 209.

Re: the above comment-

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I'm not really sure what you mean when you write that "racism requires intent."

"Racism" is not a legal term, so it doesn't make sense to describe it in terms of the elements of an unlawful action. "Unlawful discrimination" is a legal term (by definition), which may or may not require intent depending on the law in question (14th Amendment or Title VII?). When it comes to attitudes, as opposed to illegal conduct, I think most will agree that we are capable of unconscious discrimination, or harboring racial prejudices without being fully aware of that fact. Some might call that racism.

Moreover, since a piece of paper (even a state constitution) can be neither consciously or unconsciously racist, I think Share JD is suggesting that those who voted for Proposition 2 were motivated (consciously or unconsciously) by racial prejudice.

That being said, I think the language in the Share JD email was unnecessary, and that a lot of the people who voted for Proposition 2 (and Prop 209) probably did so for wholesome reasons.

When I said "intent" should be a prerequisite to calling someone racist, I meant "intent to make a certain statement", not the higher standard of "intent to be racially offensive".

Speakers of racist statements don't usually intend to offend anyone. But they do, as a result of ignorance or cloddishness. So unconscious racism that comes out that way is still racism, and speakers should be held accountable.

Share JD might find it educational to go back and read the Grutter majority decision more carefully. While the Supreme Court did finally allow racial preferences in higher education, it was out of a sense of current necessity, not long-term desirability.

As O'Connor said, "We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary". 539 U.S. at 343. So to portray affirmative action as some sort of permanent benefit of the civil rights movement is misguided.

Grutter didn't say that affirmative action is not racial discrimination. To the contrary, the whole point of the case is that affirmative action IS invidious racial discrimination. What Grutter held is that in the context of admissions to higher ed, that discrimination is acceptable.

Prop 209 probably tried to accomplish too much, too soon. But we should all be interested in a world where affirmative action isn't necessary because the gaps between racial groups have disappeared.

I'm doubtful ShareJD would sign on to the Grutter reasoning. Still, I don't see where they portray affirmative action as "some sort of permanent benefit of the civil rights movement". They do say that gains will be reversed, but that doesn't necessarily imply a belief in permanent entitlement.

Re permanent benefit: to me, when Share JD describes Prop 209 as an "attack[] on civil rights in California education", it sounds like affirmative action is being portrayed as a fundamental ingredient of civil rights. This strikes me as imprecise. But my interpretation may be wrong, and I am happy to be corrected.

However, I have not heard back from Share JD regarding my original email.

Fair enough. Somehow I don't think you will hear back from them. If you follow your own take on it, dialogue might just get in the way of self-expression.

Though we are both just trying to interpret the meaning of Share JD's statement, I believe you are wrong in posing that they are necessarily advocating the permanence of affirmative action. On its face, the statement that an "attack on civil rights in California education" does not indicate a specific durational preference of the existence of affirmative action, nor any permanent preference. It is not clear from the statement either way. One could as easily believe that it advocates the majority position in Grutter. The arguments are not definitive. Should you be curious, perhaps you should ask them to find out for yourself.

However, I believe with certainty that Share JD is concerned with the current state of diversity at the UCLA law school and feels that affirmative action is necessary to help stem the decrease in racial diversity that has taken place post-Prop. 209. I think that this is a legitimate argument to consider wherever you may fall on this issue. Although there are arguably inherent inequities in admissions as a result of affirmative action or affirmative action-like policies, the inequities predicated by inadequate education, environments, and support, among other factors that many underrepresented minorities combat during earlier stages of their development are unjust as well, and possibly more so, thus requiring the necessity of affirmative action in the first place.

You can try to rationalize or reason this situation to mete out an explanation, but it may be useful to adopt this approach: While it is arguably unfair in both respects (an unfair situation for certain groups followed by a solution that remedies that situation to an extent, but creates unfairness to other groups as well), isn't this a value judgment that society makes to cope with situations of scarce resources (in this case, admissions spaces)? In a situation like this, to give to one requires taking away from another. Someone's going to be unhappy in either circumstance. This is not just applicable to race-based policies. Since you and I (fellow UCLAW students) attend a public school, part of our education, our benefit, is subsidized by and at the expense of others. (Yes, our tuition is higher relative to most of the university, but the costs to us would still be much higher without any public funding). In essence, we have both benefited from this social policy, a form of affirmative action from an economic sense, because society has placed a higher value on providing subsidized education to those who may be less able to afford the full cost of that education, and of course, at the expense of the taxpayers.

So ask yourself this: Do you think it is more equitable for the underrepresented to have more representation in the context of university admissions by temporarily having affirmative action at the expense of the overrepresented whom are hurt without the more formal notion of fairness? (I am making the assumption that the majority of society would not want affirmative action permanently once enough parity is reached.) This may be the essential question, and you could go either way with this and make a somewhat reasonable argument.

Personally, I feel that when for example, Hispanics are closing in on composing half of the surrounding population, yet represent possibly only around a half or third or even a smaller proportion of future lawyers from a law school ordained to serve the public, it is something that society may want to rectify or at least inquire to its occurrence, as well as the possible dangers of not having a more representative body. While Grutter eliminated the use of racial quotas and allowed its continued use as a factor, I believe this was the Supreme Court majority’s way of creating a mechanism to maintain as much fairness as possible in accordance with keeping to the Constitution’s principles and the wishes of the People.

For now (and I reserve the right to change my opinion as this situation unfolds over time), my value judgment is yes, that it is more beneficial to have equal representation, even though it may be somewhat less fair for the admissions prospects of others (and I am of the overrepresented, so my admissions chances could have been lower under a system of affirmative action as well). Still, I believe it would have been worthwhile to provide this remedy to current and past unfairness, to stem future unfairness to those worthy groups, even at the expense of and the creation of some unfairness to myself and people of my ethnicity. This is the value judgment I have made, and the value judgment that I hope society will continue to adopt as long as it is necessary.

I hope you can respect this sincere opinion, as I can respect yours, and would be happy to further elaborate over a personal discussion if you should so desire.

I'm not sure I follow your argument. Do I think affirmative action is generally a worthwhile method of boosting minority enrollment? Yes.

But is affirmative action legal at UCLA law school? No. And Share JD is not going to make any headway by demanding that the school break the law.

The issue here is not results (we can all agree that more minority students = better) but methods. Sometimes I wonder whether the students who attend these protests are happier to maintain the status quo and complain about it, rather than take steps that might improve the situation.

Citysquire wrote the following:

"Although there are arguably inherent inequities in admissions as a result of affirmative action or affirmative action-like policies, the inequities predicated by inadequate education, environments, and support, among other factors that many underrepresented minorities combat during earlier stages of their development are unjust as well, and possibly more so, thus requiring the necessity of affirmative action in the first place."

While this is a good theoretical argument for race-based affirmative action, this is not how race-based affirmative action is in fact practiced. No one is checking to make sure that the black and Hispanic applicants who are admitted to colleges and law schools have led underprivileged lives.

Admissions committees are mainly looking for black and Hispanic applicants with relatively good grades and high scores. If a black applicant was raised by successful scientists in Nigeria, so be it. The New York Times ran an article a couple of years ago pointing out that most of the black beneficiaries of affirmative action at Harvard College were the children of (or were themselves) relatively successful recent West Indian and African immigrants.

So, affirmative action is almost always about skin color, nothing else. Obviously skin color still matters a lot in this country, but if one is going to defend affirmative action I think it's important to defend it as it is in fact practiced.

That is true. Race-based preferences are different than preferences based on socioeconomic status (SES). SES preferences, unlike race preferences, are legal under Prop 209.

However, schools don't tend to use them because most low-SES students are white, so SES preferences don't improve the representation of African-American or Hispanic students that much (if at all).

UCLA law school tried using SES preferences in the 90s, after Prop 209 ended racial preferences. See www.law.ucla.edu/sander/ClassBased.pdf for a summary of this project.

MB: Do you know why they stopped the SES preferences?

Obviously, I wasn't around then. But I assume it was because the SES preferences didn't improve the representation of nonwhite students, which had dropped precipitously after Prop 209. See the article for specific stats on the change in racial representation at UCLA law.

But it WAS significantly increasing the number of students with low SES. Who cares about poor white kids I guess.

You're right: in a strict race-based preference system, a poor white kid gets hosed, because they're competing directly against wealthier white kids. And they will usually lose.

One positive thing to come out of Prop 209 is that it has forced the UCs to use more subtle & creative means to detect which students deserve an admissions preference.

For instance, in the UC undergraduate application, students are specifically encouraged to write a personal statement concerning family background, personal circumstances, etc.

This way, a "poor white kid" (and any other kid, regardless of SES or race) has an equal chance to make their case, rather than having so much depend on a single "Race / Ethnicity" checkbox.

However, UCLA's undergrad diversity is pretty weak, so this system, while clever, is still arguably inadequate.

SES is still practiced at UCLA and nearly every school in the country. Poor white kids are in fact getting in as well as poor minorities. At what rates? There are no admissions breakdowns by a combination of economics and race. Your assumptions are of speculation. Race is in fact, still a consideration in addition to a whole host of other factors, hence the term "socio-economic". Does that make any sense to you guys?

About affirmative action, many still brand SES as a form of affirmative action because of its race component. So this is how affirmative action is practiced in its current sense, with the traditional sense being quotas. Reread Grutter if you have ever read it in the first place.

If you're saying that affirmative action used to take the form of quotas, and now it takes the form of SES preferences, I don't agree.

If that were true at the Univ of Michigan, there wouldn't have been any Grutter or Gratz litigation at all, since SES classifications are not facially unconstitutional.

But, since most schools keep their admissions procedures a secret, there aren't enough facts here to make this particular issue discussable.

Anonymous at 10:35 PM,

You wrote:

"Race is in fact, still a consideration in addition to a whole host of other factors, hence the term "socio-economic". Does that make any sense to you guys?"

Most people use the term "socioeconomic status" to refer to wealth, income, education, and relative social position (thus the "socio"). It is usually *not* used to refer to race, although race may correlate with socioeconomic status.

As MB pointed out, when socioeconomic status alone is considered, it is mainly poor whites that benefit, both because there are more poor whites than poor blacks (in absolute, not relative, numbers), and because poor whites still have slightly higher incoming credentials than poor blacks.

People "still brand SES as a form of affirmative action" not "because of its race component," as you suggest, but because it *is* still affirmative action -- that is, it is a preference based on something other than one's academic qualifications. Affirmative action can exist without race.

If what you are saying is that schools are still practicing both race- and SES-based affirmative action, but simply hiding the former with the latter, that's wrong. They don't need to hide anything. I have read Grutter, and it says that schools may still take race *explicitly* into account, provided it does not result in a de facto quota.

If you're talking about a school like Boalt or UCLA, where racial preferences are illegal, then I agree no one knows what is going on. But, that is certainly not the case at "nearly every school in the country," most of which are still able to explicitly take race into account (thanks to Grutter).

Grutter allows race-based preferences so we can assume a fair number of admissions offices use them. But it's also true that admissions offices use an assortment of preferences -- not just race-based -- to convert the applicant pool they've got into the student body they want.

Race-based preferences have gotten the most attention in recent years, but see e.g. Shulman & Bowen's book "The Game of Life", which examines how the preference for athletes at Ivy League schools even exceeds the preference for racial minorities. Or see e.g. me, who benefited from the preference many law schools give to "non-traditional" (= old) students. And so on.

My two cents wrote: Most people use the term "socioeconomic status" to refer to wealth, income, education, and relative social position (thus the "socio"). It is usually *not* used to refer to race, although race may correlate with socioeconomic status.

The American Anthropological Association’s statement on race states: “physical variations in the human species have no meaning except the social ones that humans put on them.”

Socioeconomic factors include race.

My two cents wrote: If what you are saying is that schools are still practicing both race- and SES-based affirmative action, but simply hiding the former with the latter, that's wrong. They don't need to hide anything. I have read Grutter, and it says that schools may still take race *explicitly* into account, provided it does not result in a de facto quota.

You're stating the obvious. See above. SES includes race, it is explicitly taken account. You've misunderstood the argument.

Anonymous at 11:15 PM,

Terms used in a certain context mean what people commonly accept them to mean in that context. In the context of affirmative action, people distinguish SES-based affirmative action from race-based affirmative action. The reason they distinguish them is because, as MB pointed out, race-based preferences are presumptively unconstitutional whereas SES-based preferences are not. People talk about SES-based preferences, or class-based preferences as they are sometimes called, as an alternative to race-based preferences. That wouldn't make a lot of sense if race was a factor in SES-based preferences.

Race may be a social construct, and all things being equal it's certainly not unreasonable to view "race" as a "socioeconomic" factor. But, when talking about affirmative action doing so is likely to confuse most people familiar with the affirmative action debate.

That being said, I wasn't entirely clear as to what your argument was to begin with. I was just pointing out what I thought were incorrect assumptions on your part.