Racial Mascotting
The Real and Imagined Impact of Proposition 209 and SP-1 at University of
California Law Schools
By William C. Kidder
APA: Asian Pacific American
Kidder reports that after affirmative action, Asian Americans went from 17.4
% to 18.3% of UC Law School enrollments, a small increase that trailed
national trends. In contrast, Kidder notes, white enrollments at UC Law
Schools jumped from 59.8% of the class to 71.7% after Prop. 209.
Tables 1 and 2 compare the number of enrolled first-year APAs in the last
three years before Prop. 209/SP-1, and the first three years after Prop. 209
/SP-1. Each figure in parenthesis is the percentage of each class comprised
of APAs. These percentages are helpful in assessing APAs' relative
representation, since it is difficult for law schools to calibrate their
offers so as to enroll an identical number of students each year. [10]
Overall, data from three UC Law Schools indicates that there were 405 total
APAs enrolled in the three years after Prop. 209 and SP-1, compared with 374
total APAs in the three years prior to Prop. 209 and SP-1. When one
controls for APAs' representation as a proportion of the total number of
first- year seats, APAs constituted 18.3% of UC Law School classes in 1997-
99, compared to 17.4% for 1994-96. Indeed, the very modest gains that APAs
made at UC Law Schools might merely reflect, at least in part, continuing
application trends in California that would have occurred with or without
the ban on affirmative action. [14] Thus, overall, the ban on affirmative
action has resulted in negligible gains for APA law students at UC Law
Schools. While this data is certainly not evidence of a return to "
Fitzgerald's Princeton," neither does it come close to justifying Thernstrom
's assertion that when race-conscious affirmative action is eliminated, APAs
reap the greatest benefit.