No on Prop 16 to stop racial discrimination and sex discrimination
Prop 16 of November 2020 Election, if approved, will repeal Prop 209 approved in 1992, giving rise to the use of race, national origin, and gender as evaluation basis in the public sector of California for college admission, job application, and contract approval. It will regressively cause serious racial discrimination and sex discrimination especially to the outrage of Asian Americans and Caucasian Americans. Please definitely vote No on Prop 16 and tell everybody you know to do the same.
Everybody should be judged objectively based on his/her accomplishments, talents, dedication, and integrity, but not on immutable traits such as color of the skin/national origin or gender. Otherwise it is discrimination based on race or sex, in accordance with the current federal and state law! It will escalate racial conflicts and lower our standards of excellence.
This is huge and incredible injustice and discrimination and greatly tarnishes the reputation and image of America! California’s result on this may be a guideline for the whole country.
Prop 16 violates the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution which clearly states that no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of its laws. The latest ruling of U.S. Supreme Court in this aspect only allows very limited usage of affirmative action (Fisher vs U. of Texas at Austin). The user has to jump over the tough hurdle of strict scrutiny, that is to prove that not using affirmative action will cause tremendous harm to the state and that there is no other better method to be employed. Prop 16 obviously violates this.
The UC current system already uses the excuse “every student has a story” to give preference to applicants with so-called unfavorable background. Asian Americans are already having a tough time in dealing with this. Last year, about 30% of the new students of UC were Hispanics, why is Prop 209 that problematic?
If Prop 209 is repealed, for example, it is anticipated that the number of Asian American freshmen in UC will drop seriously regardless and Asian Americans will also be discriminated in job/contract application in the public sector of California! How can the top capitalistic democracy in the world legalize such racial and gender discrimination?!
A Pew survey (March 2019) finds that the majority of Americans, 73% of the over 6,600 respondents, believe that universities/colleges should reject the usage of race or ethnicity in admission decisions. This rejection percentage is convincingly high across the board: Hispanics Americans-65%, African Americans-62%, Caucasian Americans-78%, and 63%-Democrats. Another study result by Marquette University unveiled about three weeks ago also finds that 77% of the respondents reject the use of race as a factor for college admissions.
Attached is our coalition’s joint statement against Prop 16. Again, please vote No on Prop 16 and tell everybody you know to do the same.
Press Release – Coalition against Prop 16 (09252020)