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UC
regent Ward Connerly pushes for multiracial category
By
Michelle Locke
Associated Press
March 17, 2004
SAN
FRANCISCO - University of California regent Ward Connerly is part
French, part Irish, part Choctaw and part African. But if he filled
out a UC application, he'd be considered one thing: black.
Connerly
says that's 19th century thinking and he's pushing to have UC
change its policy and give students the option of declaring themselves
multiracial or multiethnic.
"Why
should the University of California or the government pretend
they don't exist?" he asked. "The way we're doing it
right now - it's just backward. It's anachronistic and at some
point we're going to have to change."
Connerly's
proposal, which was to be discussed by fellow regents at their
regular meeting Thursday, follows his unsuccessful ballot initiative
last year, Proposition 54, that would have stopped state and local
governments from collecting race data on things like college admissions.
Previously,
Connerly spearheaded the effort to drop race-based admissions
at UC and led the successful campaign for Proposition 209, the
ballot initiative banning consideration of race in public hiring,
contracting or education.
His
new suggestion to add more data collection boxes doesn't indicate
a change of heart. "I don't like the boxes, but I'm accepting
that as a given," he said. "If you're going to have
the boxes, give people a choice to accurately depict how they
perceive themselves."
UC
collects race data on a voluntary basis and gives students the
option of checking from 13 race/ethnic boxes including "other."
But the data are reported to the government following the federally
specified categories of American Indian, Asian, black, Hispanic
or white.
UC
spokeswoman Abby Lunardini said the problem with adding more boxes
is that failure to follow the rules could jeopardize federal funding.
However, she said UC officials are looking into ways to more accurately
count the system's multiracial and ethnic students. "We're
not all that far apart from Regent Connerly," she said
Connerly
is urging UC to lobby the government to change its reporting requirements.
While
Connerly's proposal is still in the discussion stage, regents
were expected to vote on another admissions issue Thursday, a
resolution affirming UC's commitment to a new system of evaluating
applicants known as comprehensive review.
Adopted
two years ago, comprehensive review looks at socioeconomic as
well as academic factors. It has come under criticism following
a report last fall by Board of Regents Chairman John Moores showing
that highly competitive UC Berkeley accepted nearly 400 students
with low SAT scores in 2002 while rejecting more than 3,000 with
high marks.
A recent
UC analysis showed Berkeley and UCLA are admitting black and Hispanic
students at slightly higher rates than expected. Officials said
they don't know what is causing the discrepancy and are investigating
to make sure race or ethnicity are not being considered in admissions.
Interestingly,
the data being used for analysis is the kind of information that
would have been eliminated by Proposition 54, which was vigorously
opposed by UC.
Opponents
of Proposition 54 said the problem was it would make it impossible
to prove discrimination and there were some who wondered what
was motivating Connerly's new initiative.
"At
first blush this seems like a reasonable proposal, but because
I know of Mr. Connerly's agenda to make us colorblind, which is
simply not possible or advisable, I am very suspect of what the
true motivations are," said civil rights lawyer Eva Paterson.
Connerly
urged skeptics to "judge ideas by the ideas. Are there people
who are multiracial in California? What do you want to do with
people who are in that circumstance. Do you want to force them
to be something that they're telling you they're not?
"It's
not that I'm confusing anything. It's the fact that the realities
are becoming confusing. I'm just laying it out there."
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