Changing Life in California

In 1997, 1,065 black American students enrolled at California's two most prestigious campuses at Berkeley and Los Angeles; this year the number is 528. The number of Latino students enrolling has also fallen. Everyone knows why. Two years ago, Californians voted for Proposition 209. It prohibits race-based and gender-based preferences for, or discrimination against, individuals or groups in the state's education, contracting and employment policies. The state voted against affirmative action in 1996, and these university figures are the result (Schrag, 1998, pp. 235-239).

But the combination of these and other initiatives, starting with the watershed victory of the Proposition 13 property tax revolt 20 years ago, is indisputable. They mark the end of the Californian liberal dream, and perhaps even the end of American optimism abou

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e a weapon of resistance in the hands of California's steadily declining proportion of white voters. It is not explicitly racial, but it has a racial theme. An uncomfortably dark undercurrent does flow through the book: an implication that the state's politics have soured partly because the older white people, who tend to vote, do not want to spend money on the schools and other social services that would primarily benefit the younger, largely Latino people, who tend not to vote. As Schrag writes: "The declining engagement of business and other community organizations, and the corresponding paucity of leading citizens--lawyers, merchants, accountants and other professionals--willing to run for office has left a vacuum that's been filled by special interest groups: the Christian Right, which has managed to gain at least temporary control of a handful of districts in Southern California, but more often the public employee unions--UTLA (the United Teachers of Los Angeles) and the California Teachers Association and its various local affiliates, which have become the dominant political force in California education" (Schrag, 1998, p. 75). Schrag's case may be overstated, and it is clearly wrought with personal bias. Schrag downplay
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Approximate Word count = 1805
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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