Why repealing Prop. 209 won’t engineer a more equitable California

One day after the California Legislature reconvened this month, the controversial Assembly Constitutional Amendment 5 was approved in committee, 6-1, under the moralistic appeal of “hope for all.”

While purporting to increase diversity and representation, ACA-5 fails to meaningfully address structural issues behind achievement gaps and racial discrepancies for both political and philosophical reasons. 

Instead, the bill proposes a statewide reinstitution of government preferences in public employment, education and contracting. The utopian and myopic scheme, wrapped around a feel-good rhetoric with a steep price tag, will fall short of establishing long-lasting diversity.  

ACA-5 patches a political band-aid over deeper socio-economic issues.

The amendment seeks to repeal Section 31 of Article I of the California Constitution, which was established by Proposition 209 in 1996 to prohibit the state from “discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin” in its public institutions. In essence, it is aimed at advancing upward mobility and pay equity for the state’s “marginalized groups”  by abandoning color-blind equal treatment guaranteed by Prop. 209 and Title VI of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The amendment is expected to go through a hearing at the Appropriations Committee on June 2, before being voted on the floor of the Assembly and Senate by June 25.

While data used in the bill to support claims of educational inequity and dwindling diversity is debunked by my previous commentary, a more serious fallacy lies within the bill’s substantive overtone mistaking Prop. 209 as the root of all evil. Such a convenient causation creates a strawman that masquerades complex issues of inequalities and discrimination that existed long before 1996. 

These systematic problems, rooted in both national and global history as well as contemporary contingencies in communities and culture, will persist long after 2020, as long as we opt for easy fixes without tackling the source problems.

Empirical evidence, on national and state levels, invalidates the effectiveness of race-conscious affirmative action in closing the gaps. A 2017 New York Times analysis compared race-specific enrollment data at top U.S. universities and found that “even with affirmative action, blacks and Hispanics are more underrepresented than 35 years ago.”. 

The proxy of race is also called into question in an article by Richard D. Kahlenberg that identifies achievement gaps by income twice larger than racial gaps. In California, even with ambitious reforms to provide more resources for underserved schools and disadvantaged students, there has been little progress in terms of academic outcomes for high-needs students. Rather than Prop. 209, wider socio-economic and cultural reasons such as inefficient spending, unequal access, lack of parental involvement, community segregation and a shortage of qualified teachers, are at play.

Educational deficiencies then translate into stagnant wages for low-skill workers who are most vulnerable to automation. While one-third of working Californians make less than $15 an hour, these jobs are disproportionately held by blacks and Latinos. The problem here is not blatant racism, but interlocking factors of low educational attainment, a changing economic structure and the state universities’ lags in improving STEM training. 

None of the aforementioned issues can be redressed by simply bringing back preferential treatment in public institutions sanctioned by ACA-5. The prerogative of government preferences will only accelerate our deteriorating public education, a cultural de-emphasis on education and excellence, a shrinking middle class with hallowing productivity at its core and unrelenting demands of the global economy. Enshrined in the political agenda of social justice, ACA-5’s fixation with equal outcomes will drag everyone, including its intended beneficiaries, down.

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Wenyuan Wu is the director of administration for Asian American Coalition for Education, admin@asianamericanforeducation.org. She wrote this commentary for CalMatters.