California bill would allow slavery legacy to be factor in college admissions
Affirmative action for racial minorities seeking admission to college has been barred by California’s voters and, more broadly, by the U.S. Supreme Court. But legislation approved by the state Assembly seeks to find a way around those restrictions by allowing the schools to give preference to descendants of slavery in the United States. “This bill is not about race. It’s about relationship to a legacy of harm,” Assembly Member Isaac Bryan, D-Los Angeles, said Wednesday, a day after his bill, AB7, won Assembly passage on a party-line vote of 54-17. It now heads to the state Senate, and Bryan said he was optimistic that the measure would become law. But the Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative nonprofit, said AB7 was aimed at restoring preferential treatment based on an applicant’s race, despite its slavery-descendant language. “The idea that either (California’s) Proposition 209 or the (U.S. Constitution’s) Equal Protection Clause would countenance intentional discrimina...