S5924 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 1, 1995

Footnotes at end of article.

continued to be the focus of the Bank’s work

in South Africa during the past year. In that

country, the Bank’s informal work has dealt

with the entire political spectrum, including

nongovernmental organizations, the private

sector, teachers, and trade unions. Dozens of

South Africans have been trained in economics, and relationships have been built up

with many of the country’s economic and political actors. In April 1994, the Bank opened

up a resident mission, following a request

from the multiparty South African transitional council.

FOOTNOTES

1The SPA for low-income, debt-distressed sub-Saharan African countries provides quick-disbursing

balance-of-payments assistance to twenty-nine eligible countries (as of the end of June 1994) in support

of reform programs developed in conjunction with

the Bank and the International Monetary Fund

(IMF). 2The countries are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros,

Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Mali, Mauritania,

Niger, Senegal, and Togo. 3The parity of Comoros’ currency was changed to

75 per French franc.

BOX 5–2. TOWARD BETTER HEALTH IN AFRICA

Health issues are assuming an increasingly

important place in the Bank’s assistance

strategy in Africa. Reflecting this trend, a

major sector study was completed in 1993 in

close cooperation with the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s

Fund, and other partners. The study, ‘‘Better

Health In Africa,’’ aimed at building consensus on future health strategies in Africa

among the many stakeholders.1 It found that

while dramatic improvements had taken

place since independence, most African countries lagged well behind other developing

countries in health status. At fifty-one years

in 1991, life expectancy at birth in Africa is

eleven years less than in the low-income

countries as a group, and Africa’s infant

mortality rate, at over 100 deaths per 1,000

live births, is about one third higher on average than for the universe of low-income

countries. New health problems, such as

AIDS, and new strains of well-known diseases such as malaria, threaten the important health gains made in Africa over the

past generation.

The report discussed ‘‘best practices’’ for

health improvement by African governments

and their external partners in three areas.

First, as did ‘‘World Development Report

1993—Investing in Health,’’ the report emphasized the importance of strengthening

the capacity of households and communities

to recognize and respond to health problems.

This requires health and development strategies that increase the access of the poor to

income and opportunity, pay special attention to female education and literacy, provide for community monitoring and management of health services, and furnish information to the public and health-care providers

on health conditions and services. Second,

the report called for reform of African

health-care systems, and especially for making a basic package of cost-effective health

services available to Africans near where

they live and work through health centers

and first-referral hospitals. Third, the report

underscored the need for more efficient allocation and management of public financial

and human resources devoted to health improvement, and for their progressive

reallocation away from less cost-effective

interventions (largely provided through tertiary facilities) to a basic package. It found

substantial room for increases in technical

efficiency.2

The report concluded that substantial

health improvement in Africa is feasible, despite the severe financial constraints facing

most African countries. The will to reform

and to provide a limited package of quality,

low-cost, and highly cost-effective health

services to the vast majority of the population is central to success. The study found

that higher-income and middle-income African countries, in due course, should be able

to finance a basic package of health services

for their people from public and nongovernmental resources, without substantial external support. However, the low-income countries are likely to need donor assistance in

support of health for an extended period.

These countries now spend about $8 per capita annually on health from all sources—public, nongovernmental, and external—compared with the indicative estimate for the

basic package in the study of about $13. The

transition from the current to the indicative

level of spending will have to be implemented flexibly, on a country-by-country

basis, with provisions put in place of interim

targets to be met along the way.

FOOTNOTES

1World Bank. 1994. ‘‘Better Health in Africa.’’

Washington, D.C. 2For example, poor drug selection, procurement,

distribution, and prescription practices are responsible, together with other factors, for an effective

consumption of only about $12 on drugs for every

$100 in public spending on pharmaceuticals in many

African countries.

∑ Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, recently,

AMENDMENT TIME

fI came across an article by John G.

Kester, a Washington attorney. It is a

commonsense article about our Constitution and amending the Constitution.

I have great reverence for the Constitution, but I also know that the Constitution was written to meet problems

that existed more than two centuries

ago.

On the matter of a balanced budget

amendment, the author writes:

Congress, for instance, has demonstrated

for decades that institutionally it cannot

muster the discipline to restrain excessive

spending. Lately, ashamed to speak the

name, it even pretends that most expenditures are something else, labeling them entitlements. Presidents no longer refuse to

spend excessive appropriations. A balancedbudget amendment may be a challenge to express in words, but it is not impossible, and

it is certainly not, as Senator Chris Dodd asserts, very irresponsible. It imposes a new

constitutional obligation on Congress without micromanaging the policy choices for

achieving it. It is not likely to make the situation worse, even if courts will be invited

to construe it. And if experience suggests improvements, those can be added.

John Kester brings both scholarship

and common sense to this discussion.

At this point, I ask that his article

be printed in the RECORD.

The article follows:

[From the Washingtonian, March 1995]

AMENDMENT TIME

(By John G. Kester)

If the people really are serious about taking back their government, they can start by

amending the Constitution. There have been

a few lurches in that direction—like the balanced-budget amendment that was part of

the Republicans’ Contract With America,

and some talk about amendments that would

ban unfunded federal mandates or set uniform term limits for Congress.

That’s a beginning, but a modest one. The

current state legislatures are in a receptive

mood. If Speaker Gingrich and the new

tribunes of the people really want permanent

change in the way Washington and its federal judges run the country, then this spring

constitutional amendments ought to be blossoming like azaleas.

But don’t count on it. The op-ed pages already have begun to darken with warnings

from learned scholars, politicians, and columnists that to lay hands on the Constitution would be impractical, even dangerous,

downright unpatriotic. The Constitution,

they suggest, is so nearly perfect that to revise it would be like altering the formula of

mother’s milk—nothing else could be healthful, and any variation might make you sick.

Is the Constitution too flawless and sacred

a document to violate with alterations? Most

of the Cassandras stop short of suggesting it

was divinely inspired, but even that has been

claimed. The less devout shake their heads

and say that adding amendments just isn’t

practical—that it can never work, that even

figuring out the right words is too hard, that

the only way to fit the Constitution to the

times is to leave all corrections to the

courts.

Even aesthetics is invoked. To add amendments, it has been said, would make our

classically crisp federal Constitution resemble those ungainly creations of the 50 states.

State constitutions are longer, often loaded

with dozens of amendments, and deal with

such mundane affairs as off-street parking in

Baltimore (Maryland Constitution Article

XI–C) or preserving natural oyster beds (Virginia Constitution Article XI, section 3).

But no one has shown that state constitutions do not work—or, indeed, that lengthy

and detailed constitutions don’t work better

because they leave less room for doubt.

Automobile engines, reliably move your car

without being engineered to win beauty contests. If the purpose of the Constitution is to

model 18th-century elegance, perhaps the

parchment should be moved from the Archives to the National Gallery.

The Constitution exists to be applied, not

adored. A politically rare opportunity will be

lost if the hand-wringing about constitutional purity succeeds in scaring off reformers. Of course not every popular idea belongs

in the Constitution, and not every proposed

policy change would be a good one. But (dare

one say if?) there is room for improvement.

No one should take all the warnings

against amendments seriously. The authors

of the Constitution certainly wouldn’t have.

The men who spent the summer of 1787

holding secret meetings in a room in Philadelphia did not think they were Moses, chiseling stones with dictation from a Higher

Source. Their un-air-conditioned days passed

in disagreements, endless compromises, and

perspiration. The product was simply a wellorganized document that most could accept,

although with varying degrees of reluctance.

The 13-state ratification process that followed was even more contentious, and nearly

failed. To obtain agreement from the minimum nine states took nine months, and the

votes in key ratifying conventions were too

close for comfort: Virginia 89 to 79, Massachusetts 187 to 168, New York 30 to 27. No one

arguing for ratification ever gave a speech

claiming the document was perfect; the authors more humbly expressed hope and said

they had done the best they could.

All recognized that, as Virginia’s George

Mason observed at the beginning, ‘‘The plan

now to be formed will certainly be defective.’’ (So defective he finally concluded,

particularly in its treatment of slavery, that

in the end he refused to sign it.) For that

reason, the Constitution was written with

one article of its seven devoted entirely to
May 1, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S5925

the subject of how to amend it. This was

done, acknowledged Charles Pickney of

South Carolina, because ‘‘it is difficult to

form a Government so perfect as to render

alterations unnecessary.’’ Amendments,

James Iredall told the reluctant North Carolina ratifying convention, would provide its

own fallibility.’’ Even James Madison, called

the Father of the Constitution, anticipated

that his offspring would need to grow.

‘‘[U]seful alterations,’’ he predicted, ‘‘will be

suggested by experience.’’

Alterations did come, but mostly not in

the way Madison anticipated. They have

come usually by courts announcing, and

sometimes revising, their conclusions about

what words of the Constitution mean.

Anyone who says that amending the Constitution is in principle a bad idea is really

selling a notion about where to assign power.

For a long time now the only players in the

constitution-altering game have been judges.

They have secured their position by taking

open-ended phrases like ‘‘due process of

law’’ or ‘‘the freedom of speech’’ or

‘‘Commerce . . . among the several States’’

and announcing that these mean one thing,

and then another, and then another. Many of

their pronouncements, which take the form

of decisions in lawsuits, seem logical correct.

Others occasionally appear daffy. The secret

was spilled when Charles Evans Hughes, before he became Chief Justice, explained in a

speech: ‘‘The Constitution is what the judges

say it is.’’

That is true, however, only if the Supreme

Court’s view is not superseded by a higher

authority—the amending process. It makes

no sense to cut off debate on any subject by

saying, ‘‘The Supreme Court has spoken.’’

The Supreme Court speaks all the time. But

this is a government, not the army. The Supreme Court may speak—but the Constitution intends that if the people care enough,

the option of amendments gives them the

last word.

Adding a new provision to the Constitution

to reject a court decision—as the Eleventh

Amendment did in 1798—can at least slow a

Supreme Court down. Because the Constitution came from ‘‘We the People,’’ why should

not the people through their elected representatives participate more often in the

process of constitutional change? Especially

when the document itself—which does not

even mention interpretation by judges, much

less give judges the last word—spells out a

precise and simple amending procedure for

the people to use? Why shouldn’t there be

amendments to make corrections when the

Supreme Court gets it wrong—or, no less appropriately, when the Court’s reading of an

old provision may seem accurate, but the

people on reflection decide that they no

longer want such a rule? It is amazing that

every time the Supreme Court issues some

new constitutional interpretation, provoking

a storm of public outrage—then nothing happens.

Correcting the Supreme Court is not even

the most crucial issue. New needs develop

that don’t show up in Supreme Court decisions. Why shouldn’t the people adopt constitutional solutions for perennial problems—for instance, uncontrollable extravagance by Congress, or federal power-creep, or

war powers of the president—that seldom, if

ever, come before the courts? Even for those

who believe that the Supreme Court’s job is

to ‘‘keep the Constitution in tune with the

times,’’ it expects too much of the Court to

act as the only corrective balance wheel of

the government.

Power lies with whoever can change the

Constitution. Court decisions can be overruled by amendments, and when there is contrary consensus, they ought to be. More important, constitutional updating is not the

assignment of the Supreme Court, but rather

the duty of Congress and the states. Constant abdication of the amending power was

never expected, and in a representative government makes no sense.

The Constitution does not come to us, as

foes of amendments imply, in an undefiled

condition. True, there have been few formal

amendments over 200 years, but there has

been plenty of change in the Constitution. In

fact, although custom speaks of ‘‘the Constitution’’ as if there is only one, the reality

is that this country has had several. We live

in 1995 under the fourth constitution of the

United States.

The first constitution, adopted in 1778 by 11

sovereign governments, resembled a treaty,

and appropriately was called Articles of Confederation. It created a loose alliance of

independent states—that is, countries—designed mainly to pursue a united front in a

war. The national organization’s few activities operated by unanimous consent, which

meant it operated very little. Each of the 13

governments remained independent to set its

own tariffs, raise its own taxes and armies,

print its own money, and govern its internal

affairs. Still, the Articles of Confederation

were not a total failure. After the British decided to cut their losses and quit, the main

complaint about life under the Articles was

that state tariffs and trade barriers in independent economies were strangling each

other. A NAFTA of its time was needed.

The congress created by the Articles authorized delegates to meet in Philadelphia in

1787 to propose amendments to the Articles

of Confederation. The first thing the delegates did was exceed their authority. They

began by junking the Articles and starting

over to design a national government that

would exist in addition to those of the

states.

The result was the constitution of 1787,

which became operational in 1789. The purpose of the document was not to provide a

code of laws, secure human rights, or solve

all problems, but rather to set up—‘‘constitute’’—a new government. It contained a

handful of specific prohibitions on Congress

(like taxing exports) and the states (like levying tariffs). But mostly it outlined an organization chart and allocated powers between

the national government and states, and

among the three branches of the national

government.

Two subjects consume most of the Constitution. The first was, what powers would

the national government have? All agreed

that, quite unlike the states. It should not

have general legislative powers, but instead

would be allowed to act only on topics the

Constitution assigned to it. Just to nail that

down, 10 amendments were promptly proposed and adopted, called the Bill of Rights.

These were not really a list of rights of individuals (they left the power of state governments unrestrained), but rather they were

some important specific examples of what

the federal government had not been empowered to do—like abridge the freedom of the

press, or quarter soldiers in people’s houses.

The enumeration ended up with two directions on interpretation. The Ninth Amendment reminded that just because the federal

government could not do these things did

not imply that it was authorized to do others. The Tenth Amendment then reiterated

that unless powers were delegated by the

Constitution to the federal government, or

prohibited to the states, they all remained

with the States or the people.

The other focus at Philadelphia was the internal arrangements of the national government itself—such issues as how Congress

would be formed and chosen (a Senate chosen

by states and a House by people), the addition of a national executive, and how the

limited national powers would be divided

among the Congress, the President, and the

judiciary—which Hamilton called ‘‘the least

dangerous branch.’’

The Constitution of 1787, typical of many

hard-negotiated agreements, swept under the

rug two potentially contentious issues that

everyone hoped might go away; first, whether states that entered the new union could

withdraw if they did not like it; and second,

slavery, which the framers chose not to mention by name and not to deal with except to

give a 20-year protection to the slave trade

and require the return of fugitives slaves.

Unfortunately, over time each of those unresolved issues played into the other, and finally with the election by a minority of an

extremist president in 1860, the 1787 structure dissolved into a contest of arms. Whether states legally could withdraw—some like

Massachusetts and South Carolina had

claimed the right for years—was a question

incapable of any sure answer from logic, history, or reading the text of the Constitution.

And it was never submitted to the Supreme

Court. Instead, disproving once again the canard that wars never settle anything, it was

decisively resolved by soldiers killing each

other.

The Civil War led to the third constitution

of the United States. Although this constitution wears the more modest label of the

Fourteenth Amendment, it turned out to be

a whole new arrangement of government.

Adopted in 1868 with the forced consent of

defeated Southern states, the Fourteenth

Amendment in ringing and undefined words

forbade any state to deny equal protection of

the laws, or to deprive anyone of life, liberty,

or property without due process of law. In

the end those ringing and undefined words

drastically revised the roles of the states and

the federal courts.

For the rest of the 19th century and into

the next, this new provision was transformed

by the Supreme Court into a shield for businesses from state regulation. With each decade the sweep of the Fourteenth Amendment

got bigger and bigger. It was read to forbid

states from, for example, requiring attendance at public schools, or limiting maximum

hours of work. It became a charter for

judges, citing only the Constitution’s phrase

‘‘due process,’’ to invalidate whatever laws

they believed unwise.

Still, the limited scope of activities for the

national Congress that had been enumerated

and confined in 1787 tended to remain. A few

controversies had arisen early—such as establishing the Bank of the United States (opposed on constitutional grounds by Madison), whether the Constitution authorized

purchasing Louisiana, and Monroe’s plans

for federal road-building. But in spite of occasional pushing of the envelope of

Congress’s spending power, the government

in Washington generally left it to the states

to regulate most matters affecting people’s

daily lives, and did not find reason to read

too expansively its powers listed in the 1787

Constitution.

In the 1930s, the country was hit by the Depression and the national government became much more radical and active. The Supreme Court promptly reminded Congress of

its limited legislative role, holding that one

New Deal law after another exceeded its powers to tax, spend, or regulate commerce.

Then all of that changed. The Roosevelt

administration decided to deal with the Constitution’s restrictions not by amendment,

but as a personnel matter. Franklin Roosevelt first threatened to expand the Supreme Court from nine judges to as many as

fifteen, then found he did not need to. From

1937 to 1941 he appointed seven new justices,

all of them devoted New Dealers. Their opinions held that, for example. Congress’s power
S5926 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 1, 1995

to regulate interstate commerce was so farreaching that it could prohibit a farmer from

growing a patch of wheat for his own bread.

The limitations on the powers of the federal

government suddenly seemed to evaporate.

A fourth constitution thus emerged when

the Supreme Court by the end of the 1930s

brushed aside the doctrine of enumerated

powers, which had limited Congress by requiring reasonably clear grants of authority

in the Constitution. The Court about the

same time also renounced ‘‘due process’’ as a

restriction on state or federal legislation.

Then, having demolished all those barriers

to regulation, the Court for the rest of the

20th century began erecting hurdles of a different kind by interpreting the Bill of Rights

more expansively and reading the Fourteenth Amendment to limit the states in

novel ways. It announced that the 1868 Fourteenth Amendment without saying so had

stripped the states of virtually all the powers that the 1791 Bill of Rights had said were

outside the charter of the federal government. It also held suddenly in 1964 that the

Fourteenth Amendment had made unconstitutional all houses of state legislatures that,

like the U.S. Senate, were not based on equal

population. By the end of the century the

Supreme Court had begun invoking ‘‘due

process’’ again, but this time to invalidate

laws it concluded unduly limited personal

liberty.

* * * * *

Most real political revolutions have left

their lasting traces on the Constitution. The

Republicans after the Civil War secured the

three amendments that ultimately ended racial inequality under law, and turned out to

do far more. The pre-World-War-I Progressives, while they were democratizing state

governments, also switched control of the

Senate to the people, gave the federal government the tax base to grow, and soon

afterward helped secure the vote for women.

The New Deal even brought new access to

liquor while rewriting the Constitution by

restaffing the Supreme Court.

The time will never be better to update a

marvelous and rightly cherished document,

perhaps to correct some mistakes in how it

has been interpreted, but most important to

readjust its balances to fit the needs of a new

century. Its authors would have expected no

less.

∑ Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, there is

∑

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

fmore and more discussion on affirmative action these days.

Most of those who question affirmative action are the same people who opposed the civil rights legislation.

But there is no question that, like

any good thing, affirmative action can

be abused.

I ask that an excellent Los Angeles

Times editorial titled, ‘‘Glass Ceiling?

It’s More Like a Steel Cage’’ be printed

in the RECORD, as well as a tongue-incheek column by Robert Scheer, ‘‘Who

Needs Affirmative Action?’’ and a column that I wrote for the newspapers in

Illinois discussing this subject.

The material follows:

[From the Los Angeles Times, Mar. 20, 1995]

GLASS CEILING? IT’S MORE LIKE A STEEL

CAGE—BUSH PANEL FINDS LITTLE ROOM AT

TOP FOR WOMEN OR NONWHITES

In the heated debate over affirmative action, some who want to abolish all such programs suggest that lots of white males are

being unfairly shunted aside in favor of lots

of African Americans, Latinos, Asians and

white women. However, there simply are no

facts to support this. Indeed, according to a

bipartisan commission appointed by thenPresident George Bush, the senior ranks are

still populated almost exclusively by white

males.

The findings by the Glass Ceiling Commission, a panel of business executives and legislators, are important and especially timely.

It is expected that an initiative calling for a

blanket rejection of policies that allow race,

ethnicity and gender to be taken into account in hiring, promotion and college admissions will make it onto the California

state ballot.

In Washington, President Clinton, mindful

of the evident exodus of angry white men

from the Democratic Party, for starters has

ordered an evaluation of federal affirmativeaction programs. That’s defensible and could

prove useful. But too many in Congress are

rushing to jump on the anti-affirmative-action bandwagon, including Senate Majority

Leader Bob Dole. Ironically, long before Dole

made his presidential ambitions public, he

sponsored the very bill that created the federal panel to study the situation of minority

men and all women in American industry.

And it is that panel, in reporting its findings

last week, that turned up so little evidence

of progress.

The facts are simple. White male managers

dominate the senior levels at the top 1,000

U.S. industrial firms. They also dominate

the top 500 business firms. In the top echelon

of U.S. commerce, no less than 97% of the positions at the level of vice president and

above are held by whites, the panel found.

Between 95% and 97% of these senior executives are male. They have a lock on most of

the top jobs, while most minority men and

women and most white women struggle to

crash the glass ceiling.

The commission said that one case of the

paucity of promotions was the fear and prejudice of white men. Of course that is only

part of the problem. More minorities and

women must be given access early on to educational and social opportunities that lead

to business success. But even education does

not always level the playing field. Asian

Americans are nearly twice as likely to hold

college degrees as the general population,

yet they remain much less likely to become

executives and managers. Do racial stereotypes block their promotion?

Black men with professional degrees earn

79% of the pay of their white male counterparts. Black women with professional degrees earn even less; they earn, on average,

only 60% of what white males do. Latinos,

who are less likely to have the advanced degrees that foster advancement in companies,

are ‘‘relatively invisible in corporate decision-making positions,’’ the report says.

Their visibility should increase as their

qualifications and numbers increase. Latinos

are also hampered by pernicious stereotypes,

including the misperception that most

Latino workers are foreign-born, the panel

maintains.

The Glass Ceiling Commission based its

findings on hard information, not unsubstantiated fears. Facts, and nothing but, should

inform the intense debate over affirmative

action—and the decisions that will determine how this nation can fairly handle the

moral obligation of opening the doors of opportunity to all who knock.

[From the Los Angeles Times, Mar. 20, 1995]

WHO NEEDS AFFIRMATIVE ACTION?

(By Robert Scheer)

Forget affirmative action. Maybe it once

was a necessary tactic but its time is clearly

gone. True, there used to be slavery and segregation and women didn’t have the vote but

that’s all ancient history. C’mon, blacks and

women have all the power now. Just look at

the O.J. trial.

Try getting a decent job if you’re a white

man. You don’t see my name on the masthead of this paper. What kind of meritocracy

is this if my merit isn’t rewarded the way I

think it ought to be?

I’m not making this up, folks. The census

stats back me up. Minorities and women now

hold 5% of senior management positions, and

those used to be white-guy jobs. Even among

Fortune 1,000 companies, women now have

3% of the top slots, according to last week’s

report by the bipartisan federal Glass Ceiling

Commission. So far, black men don’t have

any of the top jobs, but if affirmative action

isn’t stopped, who knows what could happen?

Don’t try to paint me like some kind of

racist for saying this, like I’ve got something against black men. Our beef is more

with women than with black men, who are

going nowhere fast. Even though almost

800,000 black students a year graduate from

college, many of them business majors, they

don’t have what it takes to get to the top.

Most of them still don’t play golf. That’s

what a lot of white executives told the federal commission, which, incidentally, was

created by the Bush Administration, so its

results are reliable. One white manager told

the truth: that, in hiring, ‘‘What’s important

is comfort, chemistry, relationships and collaborations.’’ That’s why black, college-educated professional men earn only 71% of

their white counterparts on the bell curve:

The comfort level is too low.

The real threat is from women, with whom

white men have a longer history of relationships. I hesitate to bring it up because they

vote and it’s better to have white women believe that affirmative action is a black

thing. But take what’s called ‘‘middle management.’’ Black men account for only 4% of

those positions, but almost 40% of middle

managers are women. Unless you marry one

of them, you’re out of luck, and what does

that tell you about who wears the pants?

The big problem up the road is that you’ll

have to get along with those women, what

they call networking, just to get a job. What

does that say about traditional values when

a man has to worry about what a woman

thinks of his performance? Meritocracy, in

the wrong hands, can be a killer. No wonder

the federal commission concluded that

‘‘Many middle- and upper-level managers

view the inclusion of minorities and women

in management as a direct threat to their

own chances for advancement.’’ They’d be

stupid not to.

But we don’t have a chance a turning back

the tide unless we eliminate the discrimination against white males in the universities.

On the nine campuses of the University of

California, white men were 40% of the student body in 1980, and now they’re a miserable 24%, less than half the number of

women. Girls were always better at the

school stuff but you could count on them to

drop out along the way. Another threat is

the 12% who are Latino, but Proposition 187

should scare them off. Same for the Asians,

who outnumber white males at UC. I know

that Asians are not covered by affirmative

action, but even with round-the-clock tutoring, we can’t keep up with them. And none of

this would have happened if the blacks

hadn’t stated all this. You don’t see blacks

endangered at UC—they went up a full twotenths of a percent in the past 15 years, from

3.8% to 4%. They’re taking over.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against a

level playing field, and I know that a lot of

blacks come from disadvantaged backgrounds due to poverty. After all, census

data show that almost half of black children