Thanks to the invaluable Colorlines for finding this video produced by poet, activist and UCLA undergrad Sy Stokes. Sending a powerful message with his poem “The Black Bruins,” Stokes calls out his school for its dismal black student enrollment—only thirty-five black students in the incoming class are expected to graduate, and of the black males at the school—who make up a tiny 3.3 percent of the overall male population— 65 percent are athletes.
Affirmative action was voted down in 1996 after California voters passed Proposition 209—a law that prohibits California public entities, including UCs and state schools, to consider race, gender, ethnicity or national origins in their admissions processes. In 1998, the first year Proposition 209 took effect, UCLA’s black student acceptance rate fell from about 38 percent to 23 percent.
