(The following letter was faxed to CA Assembly Members. Dr. Haibo Huang is an advisor to 80-20 PAC)
Feb. 24, 2014
Dear AsAm Legislators in the California Assembly,
Please vote NO to SCA5 in the Assembly. Print out the two campaign posters and you will see why.
The senate passing of SCA5 with the support of all three AsAm senators had sent shock waves through the AsAm community across the nation, turning ordinary citizens into an army of political activists. Even my 6 year old son asked “Why should I be sorted like monkeys in the zoo?” What messages are we sending to our children that they should be treated differently based on their skin colors, instead of their personal efforts and qualifications?
Do NOT underestimate the resolve of ordinary people. The day of reckoning will come this November. As a California resident, I will join in hand with millions across the nation, and with the AsAm voters in your districts, to make sure the AsAm politicians are accountable to their constituents. The days, when AsAm politicians can take the money and the votes from their community, and then do whatever that suit their personal ambitions, are over. We will see to it that such politicians be defeated in the next election cycle. Please print out the attached campaign posters, and ponder whether your name, or your opponent’s name, should appear in the bracket.
Posters like these will become a ubiquitous presence in your districts leading to the next election. If the Democratic Party leadership doesn’t bent on pushing forward SCA5, they will lose their Super Majority in the California legislature. The recent mayoral election in the City of San Diego will serve as a warning: a Republican candidate prevailed in an overwhelmingly Democrat city.
SCA5 is a “Yellow Peril Act”, a 21st century version of the “Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882”, aimed specifically to impose a quota-like ceiling on the AsAm students. Quoting the news media, “Of particular issue with lawmakers is the dominance of Asian students in UC and CSU schools. Currently, UC freshmen are 36 percent Asian, 28.1 percent white, 27.6 percent Latino and 4.2 percent African American. Yet California’s population is 13.9 Asian, 39.4 percent “White alone, not Hispanic or Latino,” 38.2 percent Latino, and 6.6 percent African American, according to the U.S. Census. Hernandez and legislators representing minorities want the state’s college admissions to reflect the population more closely.” Please note that (1) AsAm are not considered a “minority” to the likes of Hernandez. (2) Latino, which has a nearly-identical population to the white, is a “minority”. (3) Latino, which has a nearly-identical college enrollment to the white, is “underrepresented”. (4) AsAm enrollment is of great concern and is a problem to be solved by SCA5. Therefore, there can be no illusion, no matter how SCA5 is sugar-coated, that it is a bill aimed squarely to limit the AsAm enrollment through a reverse “racial preference” treatment, under an argument that “the college enrollment should reflect the population”. Fortunately, such a “proportional representation” argument has been consistently rejected by the US Supreme Court in all precedent cases to be in violation of the “Equal Protection Clause” of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution. Hernandez, with the concurrence of three AsAm state senators, is attempting to draft a California State Constitutional Amendment in violation of the US Constitution.
SCA5 has no redeeming value. It cannot hide under the disguise of “equal opportunity”. In fact it is the antithesis of “equal opportunity” because it demands “equal outcomes” despite of “unequal qualifications and efforts”. It is Communism in essence because all resources are to be divided equally, depriving the citizenry of any incentive to excel, dragging down the US competitiveness in the long run. Why cannot the legislators ask the tough questions as to how to improve the quality of elementary and secondary education in certain communities, and to get down to the root of the problems to close the ever-wider achievement gaps? Instead, the legislators engaged in a cheap game of “robbing Peter to pay Paul”, for which they are assured of Paul’s support. In fact, only a subset of the Pauls is the true beneficiary of any “race conscious” policy. Social studies have concluded that 85+% of the “under-represented” students admitted under “race conscious” policies were from wealthy or middle-class families who just happen to have the right skin colors, leaving their poorer brethren in the dust. If it were for “social justice”, why cannot the “progressive” legislators introduce “socioeconomic considerations” into college admissions without regard to race and ethnicity? Such a policy would disproportionally benefit the black and Hispanic community yet it is still fair, as the poor AsAm and white kids can also be helped. Rewarding or penalize an individual based on his/her skin color is morally repugnant, even more so 50+ years after the “I have a dream” address. Hernandez and his like-minded legislators, including the 3 AsAm senators, are trying to turn the clock of the history backward. With your help, we shall overcome.
I have a dream, do you?
Thank you for your attention.
Dr. Haibo Huang
A deeply concerned California resident