This is a letter to the editor I sent to the Boston Globe earlier today. This will most likely not be published.
Affirmative Action in the University of California never granted "preferential treatment" to anyone based on race/ethnicity or gender; it did, however, use those two as factors among others to consider--the operative word here being "consider"-- for admission. According to the rebuttal to argument against Proposition 209, Clause C was included to allow sex to be considered only in a “bona fide” qualification in order to prevent, for example, the law requiring unisex bathrooms. What this implies is that, although females and males are both human, social convention dictates that there are social differences between the two that provide for very different life experiences due to their sex/gender; the same goes for race and ethnicity: although under the law all Americans have a right to higher education or, running for office, for example, there are cultural and structural barriers that prevent equal access to these. Legal equality does not mean social equality. This is not to say that individual members of these ethnic groups cannot reach success despite hardships; but when a substantial segment of an ethnic group is cyclically not going to college, living in impoverished, violent neighborhoods in metropolitan areas with a relatively high availability of job opportunities, something is definitely wrong. While affirmative action cannot remedy the failures of the K-12 system, it can provide access to qualified individuals, as reform in the K-12 system is something that will take years for state and local governments to act.
