UCLA violates California’s ban on racial discrimination

California law (Proposition 209) prohibits the use of race as a factor in, among other things, admission to public universities. If this article in the New York Times Magazine by David Leonhardt is accurate, UCLA is violating California law. It’s doing so by preferring African-American applicants under the guise of preferring low income students. We know that these preferences are racially based because, according to Leonhardt, as low income black admittees rose last year, the overall number of low income admittees fell. In essence, low income African-Americans took slots that previously had gone to low income students of other races (mostly, it seems, Asians). As Leonhardt, a fan of what UCLA has done here, puts it: “Looking at the numbers, it