Newsom predicts ‘significant decline’ in Black, Latino admissions following affirmative action
FILE – Gov. Gavin Newsom delivers his annual State of the State address on March 8, 2022, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) predicted that the country would see a “significant decline” in admissions of Black and Latino students, following the Supreme Court’s decision on Thursday restricting the use of race in college admissions.
He pointed to California’s own experience with affirmative action, which was banned by a state ballot initiative in 1996.
“The impact that had on Black and brown communities was profound,” Newsom said at a press conference on Thursday.
“For those that are wondering what’s going to happen in their states, they only have to look to California to know exactly what’s going to happen,” he continued. “You’re going to see a significant decline in African American and Latino admissions in institutions of higher learning.”
The most selective public universities in the state — University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Los Angeles; and University of California, San Diego — saw a nearly 40 percent drop in admissions of underrepresented minorities in 1998 when the affirmative action ban went into effect, according to a 2020 report.
Newsom added on Thursday that he was “frankly unsurprised” by the Supreme Court’s decision, suggesting that the current court “wants to bring us back to a pre-1960s world.”
In the ruling, the six conservative justices on the bench found that Harvard University’s and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s use of race in their admissions processes violated the Fourteenth Amendment, delivering a major blow to affirmative action programs.
On the other hand, Larry Elder said this about what happened when affirmative action ended in California. Who do you think is giving us the truth?
