Abstract

Reaffirming our actions

In the late nineties, just as the welfare laws are going to be rewritten and the immigration laws reworked, so too is affirmative action going to be changed. How quickly and how sharply the right can dismantle affirmative action will depend on a number of things: the success of the vote on California's programs this November, certainly; the level of support from the interests that finance national politics; and the lack of public support for affirmative action. A sad example of this presented itself in the summer of 1995, when the Board of Regents of the University of California system voted to end affirmative action. Looking for an issue to bolster his failed presidential candidacy, governor Pete Wilson was pushing this action, and since most of the regents had been appointed by Wilson and previous Republican governors, the measure's chance of passage was pretty strong from the start.