California Insider

A Weblog by
Sacramento Bee Columnist Daniel Weintraub

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June 25, 2003

A preference by any other name...

Californians might have thought their race-neutral admissions standards in higher education were safe from the Supreme Court’s “split-the-baby” decision in the University of Michigan case. But state Sen. Richard Alarcon, acting on behalf of the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, is asking Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer to opine on whether the decision would somehow allow race preference advocates to get around California’s own Proposition 209. Maldef, Alarcon says, wants to know if California’s ban on preferences still means what it says even though the high court now says numerical preferences are bad while vague indefinable preferences are good. Seems unlikely. Maldef and Alarcon are forgetting that the beauty of 209 is that it bans not only preferences but also discrimination based on race or ethnicity. And even Sandra Day O’Connor admits that the stuff she approves of is discrimination. It’s just, in her view, good discrimination. Sorry, that flaky stuff they’re putting out in Washington won’t fly here in sensible, grounded, down-to-earth California.