Combating the New Jim Crow in California

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Shanta Driver
National Co-Chair
BAMN

At UCLA, Ward Connerly and Richard Sander have the gall to "commemorate" the 11th anniversary of Proposition 209 in California – which is nothing other than legally-imposed separate and unequal segregation of higher education in the state with the highest Latina/o population in the nation. Prop 209 has created a two-tier system of public education, where the best opportunities are reserved for white students, and Latina/o, black and Native American students are relegated to second-class citizenship.

Like every other socio-economic system in which the best society has to offer is reserved for a select minority of the population, the backers of Prop 209 have had to concoct an ideology to rationalize such unfairness and inequality. Professor Sander is making a name for himself as just such an ideologue with what he calls the "mismatch theory," which preaches that Latino/a, black and Native American students "belong" in lower tier schools because they are not intellectually up to the competition of the UC's flagship universities. To cloak the nakedly racist nature of his so-called "theory," Sander paternalistically claims that assigning Latina/o and black students to less competitive schools is doing them a favor by giving them a greater chance of success. Similarly, the ideologues who rationalized slavery argued that black people were better off as slaves, because, unlike wage workers, slaves were guaranteed a subsistence living.

Sander's claims (and crudely manipulated statistics) fly in the face of the facts. In "The Shape of the River" former presidents of Harvard and Yale Derek Bok and William Bowen present extensive data which demonstrates that the more selective a university an underrepresented minority attends, the greater the likelihood that they will graduate, earn a higher salary and report satisfaction with their college experience. Black and Latina/o students who attend highly select universities like UCLA or UC Berkeley have a far better chance of graduating from college than students of any race who attend non-selective universities. Highly selective universities have the most resources and the greatest ability to provide the financial and institutional support needed to increase the graduation rates of all their students.

Underrepresented minority students who have low SAT scores and gain admission to and attend a highly selective university go on to graduate and professional schools at comparable rates to their white or Asian peers. Latino and black law school graduates who attend a top-tier law school are able to make the political and social contacts necessary and to gain the confidence needed to seek and attain positions of power in this society once reserved exclusively for white men. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Antonio Villaraigosa are all beneficiaries of affirmative action programs at this nation's most selective law schools. Sander's "mismatch theory" is all smoke and mirrors, appealing to white prejudice and promoting ideas of racial inferiority.