Californians vote on Proposition 16 measure to bring back affirmative action practices

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Californians to vote on reinstating affirmative action practices

Proposition 16 would allow the reinstatement of affirmative action programs in California and repeal the 1996 ban on consideration of race, gender or ethnicity in public university admissions and public contracting.

In 1996, 54% of Californians voted to pass Proposition 209, a measure that banned discrimination or preferential treatment by public colleges or other government agencies on the basis of race, gender or ethnicity, ending all affirmative action practices in the state.

Now, 24 years later, California Democrats have placed Proposition 16 on Tuesday's ballot, a measure to reverse Prop 209 and which would “permit government decision-making policies to consider race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin to address diversity.”

In an interview with Fox News, Peter Kirsanow, a commissioner on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, said that if passed, Prop 16 would result in more discrimination, would further exacerbate the country’s racial divide and would do more harm than good for those the initiative aims to help.

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“Prop 16, by allowing discrimination by elites on the basis of race and national origin in color, would actually harm Black, Hispanic, all students, the very individuals that it purports to help,” Kirsanow told Fox News.

Before Prop 209 was passed, minority students were not succeeding due to a phenomenon referred to as the “mismatch effect,” he explained.

“Colleges were engaging in racial discrimination and they were admitting Black and Latino students predominantly, who were not prepared for the institutions that were admitting them. So they had a more difficult time, they struggled and were far more likely to flunk out.”

According to Kirsanow, since the passing of Prop 209, students are more likely to be admitted into schools for which they are properly qualified and, as a result, graduation rates among minority students have increased.

Nicole Derse, the leading senior strategist for the Yes on Prop 16 initiative, told Fox News the ballot initiative is “a chance to level the playing field for women and people of color.”

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Derse argued that women and people of color still face significant barriers when it comes to business, state contracts, and education, an imbalance Prop 16 would aim to neutralize.

“Californians want to take action on systemic racism. They're talking about it at their dinner tables, they're talking about it in their schools, they know that we need to do something and Proposition 16 is a tool in which we can use to address systemic racism and gender discrimination,” said Derse.

A former chair of the board of directors of the Center for New Black Leadership, Kirsanow fundamentally disagrees with identity politics and rejects all forms of discrimination. “In the United States of America, we shouldn't be engaging in any kind of racial discrimination, national origin discrimination. California stood up against that in 1996 by the passage of Prop 209, it should not revert back to the old days of Jim Crow.”

California was the first of what is now nine states that have banned consideration of race, gender or ethnicity in public university admissions and public contracting.

While Prop 16 has received a number of large endorsements ‒ including Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris ‒ the latest polling shows support for the initiative remains below 40%.