Connerly’s legacy tarnishes university

Editor:

Ward Connerly’s departure signals a significant turning point for the UC system. It provides the UC Board of Regents with the chance not only to stop the onslaught of his crusade to resegregate colleges and universities, but presents the regents with the challenge to reverse the devastating damage that has resulted.

We could sum up the tenure of Ward Connerly as having created the most devastating setback for equality in California, the first majority-minority state in the country. As the center of these attacks, Connerly reflected one response to California’s growing multiculturalism.

In the face of the state’s changing demographics, Connerly took a stand for white privilege. The undeniable results of his policies are now in. Black student enrollment at UC Berkeley and UCLA are at an all-time low, and the vast underrepresentation of Latinos, the single largest proportion of high schoolers in the state, is creating growing anger and resentment among black and Latino youths.

Ward Connerly’s legacy? To tarnish both the reality and the image of the UC system, the most prestigious public university system in the world. Connerly’s legacy is to make California a leading center of segregation and racial divisiveness, a place in which public education is increasingly segregated, separate and unequal, and where the promise of Brown v. Board of Education is ever more faint.

On the other hand, the last two years have shown that the people of California are rejecting Connerly’s program of white privilege and growing inequality. The resounding defeat of Proposition 54 and his “multicultural box” show that California is poised to move in a progressive direction. In 2001, when the regents reversed the ban on affirmative action, they pledged to improve racial diversity in the UC system. Now is the moment to make that pledge real. We call on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to appoint a replacement for Connerly who stands squarely and firmly for integration and diversity. The governor should appoint someone who is prepared to use the Supreme Court’s decision in Grutter v. Bollinger to improve the quality of education within the UC system by guaranteeing that a critical mass of underrepresented minority students be present on every campus. We call on the regents to stand on their vote in 2001 and use every means available to them to institute affirmative action programs — the only meaningful desegregation measures ever formulated to bring about real integration within the UC system, and to make the University of California reclaim its reputation once again as a beacon of education and enlightenment and a proponent of equal opportunity in education.

This is the moment when the eyes of the world are measuring this nation’s commitment to democracy. It behooves the regents and the state of California to advance democracy within our state.

— Yvette Felarca

Northern California coordinator,

By Any Means Necessary