"What could be more upsetting than to see how little the work the universities have been doing since the 1960s (in race, gender, and sexuality studies) seems to resonate in the public sphere? The University of California in particular has built up a virtual research mill on the issues of difference and systemic inequalities, which makes this kind of legislative absurdity seem particularly hard.  And this nonsense about 'the best scores win'!  How can anyone, in good faith, suggest that such a singular test of cultural literacy as the SAT should be made to stand in as the ultimate arbiter of university admissions?" 
-- Anonymous 

"Thanks for giving me the opportunity to give voice to my frustrations with the passage and enforcement of Proposition 209.  While it seems to me that Affirmative Action may not be the most effective way of ridding our country of racism and racial inequalities, both institutional and informal, I believe that it has been the best way to start.  Forcing businesses with government contracts to hire members of chronically under-represented groups cannot and will not make up for centuries of discrimination;  moreover, unfortunately, it leads to the kind of resentment of 'special treatment' that brings about the passage of legislation like 209.  However, I do believe that such hiring can and has had a beneficial economic influence on the minority groups targeted. 

In my opinion, widespread access to the best education available is the best possible way of rectifying the horrifying imbalances that exist among different racial and ethnic communities in our society.  Only in offering the opportunity of equal education will we ever be able to legislate against racism and right the wrongs that have plagued the US for so long. Tragically, 209 also strikes a terrible blow to the possibility of education's playing this role.  I believe that it is incumbent on the Regents of the University of California to help to reverse the awful effects that imbalances in the quality of primary and secondary education that plague our state." 
-- Anonymous

The brutality of our tax-based school funding becomes only more insidious when you examine the ways in which racism is an integral part of these social divisions. In some sense, it is "only a reflection" of ourselves - of the profound choice we have made as a culture to live culturally, racially and economically segregated. We have systematized and institutionalized these divisions. No, let's be accurate: the secondary schools are not merely a social "reflection," they are products created by us; and through the institutionalization of impoverished education we work to enforce these social divisions. It is clear to me then that only the real work of deep self-examination necessarily leading to active involvement in community will change this institutionalized practice of racism and classism. In other words, agressive cultural work and intervention is a necessity, a responsibility of the individual and the community. 

As a former Assistant Director of College Admissions, I continue to examine my own role and actions during my years as one of the "gate-keepers" of higher education. I can say that Affirmative Action provided one of the only "bureaucratic" methods of actively addressing the very real, material problems of the class based secondary school system. Unfortunaetely, a "bureaucratic" method is exactly what is needed, is in fact all that is heeded within the administrative, buraeucratic walls of admissions. Affirmative Action was one of the few avenues for an agressive (ie: effective) institutional response to race, class, and gender inequalities. 

I support a continuing re-examination of Affirmative Action. However, Prop 209 does not represent that to me. I see in Prop 209 a culture's desire to deny its own racism in both its historical and current forms. Prop 209 denies the social inequalities which exist in this country and which are race, class and gender based. Prop 209 apathetically gives in to the status quo as though it were a benign and "natural" state of affairs. 

I want to know: What are we going to do about it?! 

As an educator, the questions for me are rooted in the fact of a brutal educational system which is systematically neglecting and damaging poor and minority children purely on the basis of their abject staus in our culture. This racist segregation is profoundly damaging to us all. It is our collective responsibility to address, not deny, these inequities and to agressively work against them and not to passively assume they will go away or do not exist. I believe institutions are inherently flawed. However, we enforce these racist social divisions through institutions and therefore one very important arena for fighting against 
them must an institutional mechanism." 
-- Jeanne Scheper