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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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The most likely reason for that is they came up with ways around the ban.

The percentage of Asian students kept climbing at places like UCB, but white enrolment is essentially the same as it was before prop 209 passed in ‘96. All the data is publicly available.

According to the interactive graph at kidsdata.org, the proportion of young (<18 years old) white persons in California has fallen from 40% in 1995 to 28% in 2010, and still remains under 30% as of 2021. The percentage for Asian increased slightly from 2000 to 2021. Latino went from 41% to 51% from 1995 to 2010. Perhaps it's partially a flight from white as @jeroboam suggested, but likely it's mostly just the Great Replacement doing its thang.

So if percentage of enrolled students at UCB being white is "essentially the same" in 1995 as it is now, that does imply affirmative action was disadvantaging whites prior to the 1998 admission class (first class in which the ban went into effect).

This graph, for UCLA, also suggests affirmative action disadvantaging both whites and Asians. In the first admission year after the affirmative action ban went into effect (1998), the percentage of UCLA acceptances that went to whites increased from about 29% to 31%, and the percentage of acceptances that went to Asians went from 37% to 40%. Latino decreased from 20% to 10%, and black from 7% to 3%.

However, one can Notice that the percentage of Unknowns going way up from 1995 to 1998 (from 6% to 15.5% or so), before decreasing thereafter. Possibly, with affirmative action in the spotlight in California, due to Asians and white applicants going "oh shit" and selecting "Unknown" or "Prefer not to disclose" on their applications. Adjusting for this, the percentage white increases from about 31% to 37% from 1995 to 1998, and Asians 39% to 47%. Latinos decrease from 21% to 12%, and blacks 7% to 4%.

This reinforces my earlier recollection that the affirmative action ban led to UCB and UCLA white and Asian numbers spiking up, and latino and black numbers going down, the effects receding only slightly in the years thereafter. It does however look like, at least for blacks, UCLA found some way to increasingly put their thumbs on the scale starting around 2005.