Vote to restore opportunity

Neither the #MeToo movement nor the term “systemic racism” was on the top of public mind in 1996 when California voters passed an initiative to ban affirmative action. The dream, or perhaps the illusion, of a colorblind and meritbased society was a propelling argument for the law that effectively prohibited public universities to consider race or gender in admissions or for state or local governments to offer contract preferences to businesses owned by women or people of color.

It’s past time to reconsider those assumptions that led to the passage of Proposition 209.

California voters will get that opportunity after the state Senate voted Wednesday for ACA5, which would repeal the prohibitions on affirmative action in the state Constitution.

Much has changed in the state’s political landscape in the 24 years since Republican Gov. Pete Wilson was a prominent advocate of the measure being pushed by UC Regent Ward Connerly. The state’s demographics have shifted dramatically (53% white then, 36% now) and Republicans now account for less than 25% of registered voters. Not a single statewide office is held by Republicans.

What has not changed is that people of color remain underrepresented in many of the critical indicators of opportunity, from higher education admissions to public contracts. The racial disparities are particularly acute in the University of California’s most competitive campuses in Berkeley and Los Angeles. The Prop. 209 restrictions put UC at a disadvantage against private schools in recruiting topflight students from underrepresented groups.

The movement to repeal Prop. 209 has been stirring for years, but one of its roadblocks had been opposition from some Asian American groups who worried that the return of affirmative action could work against Asian American applicants to the UC system. That political impediment all but dissolved this week when the Asian & Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus endorsed ACA5. As Sen. Richard Pan, DSacramento put it, opposition to affirmative action is “not colorblind — it’s blindness toward structural racism.”

A reconsideration of Prop. 209 is long overdue, and it comes at a time when Americans are confronting the uncomfortable reality of inequities that have not gone away.