While Proposition [209] hasn’t ended all state-sponsored race and sex discrimination in California, it ended a whole lot of it. That’s why progressive legislators want to get rid of it. It’s in their way.
Their new plan—ACA 7—will put on the ballot what purports to be a mere “exception” to Proposition 209. But the exception will swallow the rule. The governor will be able to authorize discrimination if there is “research” showing that such discrimination will “increase[e] the life expectancy of, improv[e] educational outcomes for, or lift[] out of poverty specific groups based on race … sex, [etc.]”
Anyone who understands a thing or two about “research” knows that you can find “research” that finds the moon is made of green cheese. But the “research” won’t even need to be fraudulent. If you pass a law that says only people from the “right races” can get state jobs or contracts, that will indeed “lift” them “out of poverty.” But it will do so by unfairly driving those of other races into poverty.
[Have we ever seen a more determined class of ruling elite determined to impose their ethnic determinism on a population in the form of law? Why yes, we have — it was called Jim Crow. There may be a good case for income- or wealth-based systems of ensuring access to government benefits, but there isn’t any for ethic-based redistribution, especially not in California. — Ed]
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