Affirmative Action in California

Proposition 209 abolished minority and women preferences in contracts, state employment, and education. Prior to the passage of the proposition, state government had a diverse system of minority and gender set asides, quotas, and preferences in its recruitment and hiring practices. Sometimes a minority or woman who had fewer technical qualifications was admitted to college, hired for state civil service employment, or awarded a state contract based on race or sex.

The supporters of Proposition 209 claimed that their purpose was to help promote a color-blind society. Their assumption is that the college admissions, state hiring, and contracts awards processes occur free of racial or sexual discrimination. While supporters acknowledge that racial and sexual discrimination may have occurred in the past, these practices have since been purged. Thus affirmative action: "Creates a racial spoils system, corrupts uniform standards of achievement, exacerbates racial and ethnic animosities and stigmatizes real minority achievement as being mer

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d aspects of the debate, "Willie Horton wants your job. He wants your son's place in college" (Cose, 1996, p. 43). In focusing on race, affirmative action opponents overlooked the effects of the system on women. Many male-dominated domains, like the construction industry, which had been largely closed to women were forced open by requiring contractors to at least make good faith efforts at meeting gender quotas before bidding on state contracts. Thus women, not African-Americans, have been affirmative action's primary beneficiaries. But gender does not incite emotions the way race does, and the Proposition 209 campaign was characterized by ad campaigns that struck emotional chords: "Opponents wrapped Prop 209 advocates in the sheets of the Ku Klux Klan . . . Meanwhile Prop 209 supporters cloaked themselves in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., a tactic that infuriated King's widow" (Cose, 1996, p. 43). Another argument in favor of affirmative action is that the actual number of minorities affected by the policy has never been great. In the words of Ward Connerly, the outcome of affirmative action was to allow "a handful of blacks and Chicanos even though they are not competitive" the opportunity to attend prestigious s
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