November 15, 2020 by Amanda Rondez

Proposition 16 was a measure on the 2020 general election ballot that would have restored affirmative action for California’s public institutions. However, the ballot measure failed by 14.2 percentage points, or roughly 2.3 million votes, according to The New York Times. 

A “yes” vote on Proposition 16, also known as Assembly Constitutional Amendment 5 (ACA-5), would have repealed Proposition 209 and Article 1 Section 31 of the California Constitution. Proposition 209, passed in the 1996 election, made affirmative action programs illegal in California and established Article 1 Section 31, which says that “the State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting.”

The term “affirmative action” was first used in Executive Order 10925, issued by John F. Kennedy in 1961. The order told government contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color or national origin.”

The guidelines for affirmative action were further defined by Executive Order 11246 in 1965 and amended in 1967 to protect women from gender discrimination. A multitude of legislative actions were also put in place to extend affirmative action programs and prohibit discrimination, including The Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

Affirmative action’s purpose is to provide opportunities for racial minorities and women to enter public institutions of higher learning and workplaces in which they have been historically underrepresented due to various inequities.

“Affirmative action is a government driven attempt at remedying some of the structural disadvantages that target racial minorities by ensuring that they have equality of opportunity regardless of the structural situations that they are currently faced with,” Jess Lee, Cal Poly sociology professor, said. “So this goes beyond just race, it encompasses issues regarding gender, religion and sexuality.”

Psychology senior Caprial Koe, who is part of a Cal Poly Multicultural Center affiliated team that runs the Instagram account (@cpvotingedu) aimed at educating students about propositions on the ballot, supports affirmative action. 

“I think it’s so important that every certain aspect of our world needs to have diversity because, if you don’t, then so many things are lost — half of the conversation is lost. ”

— caprial koe

“There’re so few people of color in [the workforce] that are creating the way that our future will be. We need affirmative action in order to make sure there’s representation for [people of color].”

Proposition 16 was added to the California ballot in June, according to Los Angeles Times, following the murder of George Floyd which sparked racial unrest and activism across the nation. California State Assembly member Shirley Weber introduced the measure and brought attention to the systemic inequalities at the forefront of people’s minds. This year, racial minority groups have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and cases of police violence toward the Black population have been brought to light time and time again. California is one of ten states to have banned affirmative action, including Idaho earlier this year.

The ballot measure failed despite endorsements by the University of California (UC) Board of Regents, California State University (CSU) Board of Trustees, all 10 UC campus chancellors, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and Governor Gavin Newsom. KQED reported that the proposition was placed “relatively late in the election cycle,” making it difficult for proponents to educate others about the proposition, especially during challenges posed by the pandemic. 

Proposition 16 only passed in Los Angeles and five Bay Area counties, according to Associated Press. It failed by more than 50,000 votes in San Luis Obispo county, where 67.25 percent of voters chose "no," despite a large population of Cal Poly students in the county electorate. 

Misconceptions surrounding affirmative action have clouded the policy’s true intentions and even spread fear among certain populations. 

The United States Supreme Court deemed racial quotas illegal in the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke case in 1978. Therefore, affirmative action programs can not establish racial quotas and, instead, consider race as just one of multiple factors in admissions, hiring and promotion processes.

“This framing of affirmative action as a preferential treatment is where people feel the most resistance, but it’s not a preferential treatment,” Lee said. “It’s just trying to provide equality of opportunities where some people don’t even have a chance at the same kind of opportunity.”

Asian Americans have been widely seen in the news in opposition to affirmative action through high-profile lawsuits but, in reality, they are more likely to support Proposition 16 and had the highest percentage of those who reported they were undecided compared to White and Latinx voters, according to survey data from Public Policy Institute of California.

“Even though Asian Americans may be overrepresented in higher education — especially in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields — when we look at workplaces, it’s a completely different story,” said Lee. “There’s a bamboo ceiling — we don’t see Asians Americans leading at the top as much as they are overrepresented in higher education and high-paying occupational sectors.”

According to a CNN article by sociologists Jennifer Lee and Van Tran, Asian Americans can benefit from affirmative action, as they face discrimination and bias in the job market when immigrating to the U.S. which results in an “occupational mismatch” where some Asian immigrants are overqualified and underpaid.

“Language barriers, foreign accents and cultural biases against newcomers often make it difficult for many highly-educated Asian immigrants to transfer their university degrees, job skills and work experience from their home countries to the U.S. labor market,” Jennifer Lee and Tran said.

While California’s government and public institutions are not allowed to consider race or gender in admissions, hiring and promotion processes, there are methods in place that address socio-economic discrepancies. U.C. admissions, for example, consider an applicant’s family income, first generation status, location of secondary school and other environmental factors that may restrict access to resources. They also offer specialized services and mentorship for first-generation students as well as have diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training programs and workshops in place.

Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, is the least racially diverse public university in California, with 54 percent of students identifying as white in 2019, according to The San Luis Obispo Tribune. 

“You see Cal Poly and that there are these predominantly white institutions [in California], and that shows where our future is going and how our future workforce is going to be,” Koe said.

California’s public universities continue to not be reflective of the state’s racial demographics. The U.C. Berkeley study “Affirmative Action, Mismatch and Economic Mobility After California’s Proposition 209” found that enrollment of Black and Latinx students decreased in the U.C. system after Proposition 209, which originally banned affirmative action, was put into effect. Applications from Black and Latinx students declined overall and underrepresented minorities earned an average of 5 percent less every year, heightened by a tech “boom” in the late 1990s when higher education was an entryway to a career in that industry, according to The New York Times.

While there still is a lot of work to be done when it comes to DEI initiatives in public institutions — both in California and around the country — and despite the outcome of Proposition 16, there are some steps being made in this direction. Latinx students made up 36 percent of those admitted to the U.C. system, making up the largest proportion of student demographic admitted for the 2020-2021 academic year for the first time in history, according to CNN. Admission offers also increased by 16 percent for those in underrepresented groups and 4 percent for low-income students.

However, while the U.C. takes socio-economic factors into consideration for admissions, this does not wholly address racial discrepancies.

“Income can change and fluctuate, whereas race does not change and we have seen historic systemic racism with people of color, and income does not necessarily have the same implications that race does historically,” Koe said.

Proponents of affirmative action must continue to educate the public of the true intentions and purpose of the policy, despite not knowing when another opportunity to reinstate it may arise.

“[Affirmative action] isn’t giving preferential treatment and it’s not a quota system like many people think it is —  it’s really just trying to address this system that’s been created unequal," Lee said. “If anything, [implementing] affirmative action to undo systematic injustice is more American than relying solely on this meritocratic ideology that we believe in.”