The 2020 campaign to restore race-conscious affirmative action in California was close to gospel within the Democratic Party. It drew support from the governor, senators, state leaders, nonprofit and labor elites, Black, Latino, white and Asian.
A demonstration for affirmative action outside the U.S. Supreme Court, which was hearing oral arguments in a case that could determine if schools can continue to consider race as a factor in admissions decisions, in Washington, Oct. 31, 2022.
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 Joe Biden swamped Donald Trump by 29 percentage points in California, but Proposition 16 went down, with 57% of voters opposing it. Los Angeles voters, an ethnically diverse and liberal lot, passed the proposition by a mere whisker, 51% to 49%. And the Times analysis of electoral precincts found across all races, support for the referendum fell well short of support for Biden on the same ballot.In 1996, California voters banned affirmative action, during a more conservative time, with a Republican governor.
“There is amazing momentum for righting the wrongs caused by centuries of systemic racism in our country,” John A. Pérez, then the chair of the California Board of Regents, said during the 2020 campaign. This was true even of majority Black precincts in Los Angeles, which supported Proposition 16 by wide margins. Biden outpaced that support by an average of about 15 percentage points.
“The 1996 vote was significantly more racially polarized than the 2020 vote,” noted Richard Sander, a law professor at UCLA and a critic of race-conscious affirmative action. “The 1996 campaign was cast in stark racial terms. The Prop 16 campaign was much less so, and to the extent that it was, voters did not buy it.
Asian voters spoke of visceral unease. South and East Asians make up just 15% of the state population, and 35% of the undergraduates in the University of California system. “There were lots of students of Indian and Chinese descent who had to settle for schools not of their caliber,” said Muralitharan, who grew up in Fremont, California, a predominantly Asian middle-class suburb of San Jose.
Black voters often spoke of different calculations in their support of affirmative action. They pointed to the toll of racism: poor schools, lagging incomes and generational wealth a fraction of that of white Americans. In the UC system as a whole, trends were less dire. Latino enrollment soon doubled. Black enrollment fell and recovered. Today, Black enrollment stands at 5%. The overall six-year graduation rate of Black students stands at 77%. White enrollment fell to 18% today from 35% in 1996.
The system takes in many transfer students from the California State and community college systems. Transfers account for one-third of new students at Berkeley; many are low income and nonwhite.“Many states may be looking at the California example, and what we did and how we responded when affirmative action was ruled out,” noted Sylvia Hurtado, an education professor and former director of the Higher Education Research Institute of UCLA.
There is reason to wonder if California’s model is replicable. The state has poured money and effort into attracting diverse students. In a post-affirmative action world, other states might balk at such investments.
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