J*******g
发帖数: 8775 | 1 【 以下文字转载自 SanFrancisco 讨论区 】
发信人: JasonYang (Jason), 信区: SanFrancisco
标 题: SCA5 上雅虎新闻了
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Wed Apr 23 09:57:05 2014, 美东)
http://news.yahoo.com/california-bill-reignites-affirmative-act
刚才看到顺便转一下。似乎关注的人很少，而且很快就从主页上摘掉了。也许大家可以
顶一下。
California bill reignites affirmative action fight
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Nearly 20 years after California became the first
state to ban the use of race and ethnicity in college admissions, a
proposal to reinstate affirmative action has sparked a backlash that is
forging a new divide in the state's powerful Democratic Party and creating
opportunity for conservatives.
The debate is unfolding in the nation's most populous and most ethnically
diverse state as an unrelated U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholds voters'
rights to decide whether racial considerations should factor into university
selections.
The California proposal would allow voters to rescind their state's
affirmative action ban, but unexpected pushback from families of Asian
descent who mobilized through Chinese-language media, staged rallies and
organized letter-writing campaigns has all but killed the measure.
"I was surprised," said Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-Covina, the author of the bill.
"I didn't expect it."
Asian-American students are enrolled at many of California's top schools in
numbers far greater than their proportion of the state's population. Critics
of Hernandez's plan expressed concern that qualified students would be
dismissed simply because of their ethnicity.
The ensuing debate has reopened an old fissure over the role of race in
college admissions, divided Democrats along racial lines and created an
opportunity for the California GOP.
California voters were the first in the nation to ban the use of affirmative
action in university admissions in 1996. Hernandez has tried recently to
undo that action, saying it harms black and Latino students. His proposal,
SCA5, was his fourth attempt.
A similar voter-approved ban in Michigan was upheld by the nation's highest
court Tuesday, but that ruling is not expected to change the discussion in
California, where the prohibition is likely to remain in place independent
of the court decision.
Hernandez's proposal sailed through the state Senate in January on a
Democratic Party-line vote. Legislative leaders, however, pulled the bill
before it could be debated in the Assembly after the harsh reaction.
The controversy highlights the complexity of racial politics in California,
where the public school system has struggled for decades to improve
achievement. Critics of the affirmative action ban say it's part of a school
system that fails black and Latino students.
Blacks and Latinos are more likely to attend the state's lowest-performing
schools than their white or Asian counterparts, affecting their ability to
be accepted into four-year universities, where they are underrepresented.
Rather than debate Hernandez's full proposal, lawmakers now plan to hold
hearings about affirmative action and other aspects of campus equality.
The state's governing party has split along racial lines. Three Asian-
American senators, all Democrats who were seeking higher office at the time,
withdrew their support of the bill after being bombarded by public
criticism.
Six black and Latino lawmakers have since withdrawn their endorsements of
Sen. Ted Lieu, who is Chinese-American, in a Los Angeles-area congressional
race where he faces another Democrat in the primary. And some black and
Latino Assembly members this month withheld votes from unrelated legislation
about the state's carpool program by Assemblyman Al Muratsutchi, D-Torrance
, who is Japanese-American.
The Senate's Democratic leader, President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg,
acknowledged the animosity. He said in a statement that he wanted "a serious
and sober examination" of affirmative action, adding "I am deeply concerned
anytime one ethnic group turns on another."
In recent statistics, the University of California system said 36 percent of
its in-state freshman admissions offers for fall 2014 are to Asian-American
students, 29 percent are for Latino students, 27 percent are for white
students and 4 percent of offers are to black students.
At some campuses, including UC-San Diego and UC-Irvine, Asian-American
students accounted for more than 45 percent of admitted freshmen last year.
Hispanics have slightly overtaken whites as the largest ethnic group in
California, although both groups represent about 39 percent of the
population. Asian-Americans — a population that includes Filipinos, Chinese
, Indians, Japanese, Vietnamese, Laotians and others — comprise about 13
percent. Blacks are less than 6 percent.
Hernandez said nothing in his proposal would impose quotas based on
ethnicity, which have been ruled unconstitutional. He said race, ethnicity
and gender would be added to a list of factors college admissions officers
already consider, such as extracurricular activities and family income.
"Rather than create a wedge, my idea is to have a real public debate about
this," he said. "What's wrong with talking about race?"
The uproar has created a potential inroad for California's minority party.
Republicans have struggled to attract younger and non-white voters since the
mid-90s, when Republican Gov. Pete Wilson supported a proposal that banned
immigrants in the country illegally from access to most social services,
Proposition 187 in 1994, and the constitutional amendment that prohibited
the use of racial considerations in education, state hiring and contracting,
Proposition 209 in 1996. Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, New
Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington subsequently adopted similar bans.
Seeking to capitalize politically, Republicans are now targeting upwardly
mobile Asian-Americans angered by the proposal. Peter Kuo, a Republican
candidate for state Senate, has been outspoken on the issue during his
campaign for an eastern San Francisco Bay Area district that is 40 percent
Asian-American.
"The Democratic Party is the party using the name of equality and diversity
to lower the standard and preventing us from going into higher education,
instead of using merit, which is the way we thought it was going to be,"
said Kuo, who came with his family from Taiwan when he was 14.
"I can't go and tell my kids, 'Hey, because you're Asian you can't get into
the school you want,'" he said. "The American dream is really built on hard
work, education and equality." |
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