California’s Memory Loss

The University of California is “ending the requirement that diversity statements be used in hiring,” the California Globe reports, “the latest move away from diversity-based hiring and applying measures at the UC system.” Lost in the shuffle is California’s previous move to end “diversity-based” hiring, code for racial and ethnic hiring banned by state law.

In 1996, state voters passed the California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), Proposition 209 on the ballot, that banned racial and ethnic preferences in state education, employment, and contracting. Contrary to popular belief, the measure did not ban “affirmative action.” The state could still lend students a hand on an economic basis but could no longer admit and hire on the basis of race and ethnicity. At the time, state officials had forgotten a lesson from 1978.

The University of California at Davis medical school rejected Allan Bakke not because the Vietnam veteran was unqualified but on account of his race. The person of pallor sued and won, but California continued to reject and admit students on the basis of race and the proportionality doctrine.

State education, employment, and contracting, this view contends, must reflect the racial and ethnic proportions of society. If they don’t, the cause can only be deliberate discrimination, and the remedy must be some sort of quota system now passed off as “diversity” or DEI. This doctrine ignores realities such as personal differences, effort, and choice.

CCRI put an end to diversity dogma, and the disaster opponents predicted never occurred. As Thomas Sowell noted in Intellectuals and Race, after Prop 209, blacks and Hispanics graduated from UC schools in greater numbers. State educrats fought the measure from the start and in recent years built a vast DEI establishment that burdened taxpayers while serving no educational purpose.

In 2020, Californians rejected Proposition 16, which would have overturned CCRI. UC bosses ignored the voice of the people and continued to deploy ruses such as diversity statements. Another dubious standard for hiring was previous employment at a federal bureaucracy.

In 2013, the University of California hired former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) director Janet Napolitano as president of the UC system. As state auditor Elaine Howle discovered, while hiking tuition and fees, Napolitano maintained a secret slush fund of $175 million. So, instead of diversity statements, better background checks could improve accountability.

DEI policies are an expensive proposition, but hardly the only evidence of California’s memory loss. In the 1990s, Spanish-only instruction, disguised as bilingual classes, was hurting the educational and employment prospects of immigrant children. The 1998 Proposition 227 required public school instruction to be conducted in English. The measure passed 61.28 to 38.72 percent, and the vote should not have been necessary.

In 1986, California voters passed Proposition 63, the Official Language of California Initiative. This measure directed the state legislature to “preserve the role of English as the state’s common language” and refrain from “passing laws which diminish or ignore the role of English as the state’s common language.” The measure passed 73.25 to 26.75, but state legislators and public officials acted as if it never existed.

Proposition 13, the 1978 People’s Initiative to Limit Property Taxation, passed by a margin of 64.79 to 35.21. The measure required no new state spending or state hires, but politicians blamed it for a host of fiscal woes, while they hiked income and sales taxes to record levels.

Last year a measure similar to Proposition 13, the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act, qualified for the November ballot. Gov. Gavin Newsom and recurring governor Jerry Brown prevailed on a compliant state supreme court to take the measure off the ballot. Cutting out the voters on taxes is bound to have consequences.

Newsom and Brown seem to have forgotten that people once streamed into California from far and wide. And they don’t seem to care that most of the traffic is now on the way out, to states with lower taxes&l t;/a>, fewer regulations, and more economic freedom.