EDITORS' CORNER
It’s an ‘underhanded approach at racial preferences,’ California Policy Center leader says
Despite legal concerns, a California bill that would allow higher education institutions to prioritize slave descendants in admissions is advancing in the state legislature.
The “reparations” bill, AB 7, passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in an 11-2 vote last week after the state Assembly approved it in June.
“We feel that, as attorneys, AB 7 doesn’t focus on race but focuses on descendants of enslaved people, a legal term of ours that gives us a better chance of surviving legal scrutiny,” Tiega Varlack, secretary for the California Association of Black Lawyers, told the California Black Media Network after the committee vote.
If passed, the bill would allow the California State University and the University of California, as well as private colleges and universities, to “consider providing a preference in admissions to an applicant who is a descendant of slavery, as defined, to the extent it does not conflict with federal law.”
Varlack said her association supports the bill because “education is extremely important to our pipeline.” She also said it will provide better “educational equity and reparative justice” for African Americans, according to the report.
But others told lawmakers the “reparations” measure will violate state and federal civil rights laws.
Lance Christensen, the vice president of education policy at the California Policy Center, described the bill as an “underhanded approach at racial preferences” in a recent interview with the LAist.
“I think we’re getting close to the place where we should stop race-baiting a lot of our bills,” Christensen said, later adding: “And there are places where we were really not good to a lot of Black people, Asians, Native Americans and other disparate people. This is not one of those places where I think that we should focus our time and attention.”
The Californians for Equal Rights Foundation also opposes the bill, stating it would lead “to de facto racial preferences without facilitating any meaningful changes,” according to the LAist.
Edward Blum, the president of Students for Fair Admissions, made a similar comment in an interview with The College Fix earlier this year.
“Prioritizing the status of those who self-identify as descendants of U.S. slaves in college admissions is the same as using racial classifications,” Blum said. “Being a descendant of a slave is an exact proxy for being an African American.”
His organization successfully challenged affirmative action admissions policies at Harvard and other schools at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023. It believes “a student’s race and ethnicity should not be factors that either harm or help that student to gain admission to a competitive university.”
However, another supporter of the bill, Brandon Greene with the Western Center on Law and Poverty, told the Senate committee that he believes the bill will withstand legal scrutiny because it doesn’t force universities to consider a student’s race.
“As you all consider your support for this bill, it’s vital that we understand that this bill is about lineage, not race, as the opposition has suggested,” he testified, according to the CBM Network.
MORE: California bill allowing admissions priority for slave descendants draws scrutiny
IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A teacher talks with a black student; Dragen Zigic / Shutterstock
