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Notes -
It did work in California and the in-state student demographics of colleges like Berkeley and UCLA did - for many years - genuinely reflect who the highest performing students in California were. Since 2018 the UC system has done everything possible to stealth-implement affirmative action, with some success.
Still, the proportion of African American students at UC Berkeley is half what it was in 1995, and only 3%, whereas at Harvard and Yale it’s 12-15%.
UCLA is back to its pre-ban demographics.
Even by hugely reforming its admissions process over 20 years, radically changing its course offering to appeal to more black students, implementing possibly the country’s largest and most significant outreach program to black high schoolers, and eliminating test scores from consideration entirely, they’re at 8%.
In 2021, 18% of incoming Harvard students were black.
If the court had taken the wording of the California proposition, that would have been a much better judgment.
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