It's been fun writing this blogs, but I will be leaving. A new blogger will be taking over this site.

Good Bye,
cleo Evadora Writters

On July 11th I wrote an article about 3 bills, AB 428, SB 405, and AB 178. These are billed the Applied Research Center (ARC) have been trying to pass for the last few months.

To get an idea how to these bills are faring, I interview Jarad Sanchez of the Los Angeles Applied Research Center.

After two month the bill AB 178 has already died. It did not get passed the Senate Education Committee as expected. The committee found that it was too expensive.

Normally you would not expect the Senate Education Committee to take the price of the bill into the account. That is supposed to be the Senate appropriation's job. However we live in a world of politics.

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Affirmative Action is not about diversity. It is not about making campus "balanced." Before you argue that we need diversity you have understand what Affirmative Action is really about.

Affirmative Action was made to help the disadvantaged. It was made to level the playing field. 150 years after Emancipation Proclamation, and 470 years after witch trials, and decades after "operation wet-back," bigots have found new and more innovated ways to hurt minorities. Whether it be redlining to prevent integration or channeling minority student into remedial classes, many policies have damage the poor and non-whites.

They argue that minorities are unqualified because of low SAT scores. They say that high drop out rates illustrate low work ethic. The fact that is easier to blame minorities for their problems makes these stereotypes easier to accept.

The race problem in America is probably not your fault. Most have probably not been activate in the obsessive system. But what many people are guilty of is lack of action. Between the real estate "reformation" of New Orleans, to the genocide in Darfur, most people do not care.

Many people will try to appear as if they are not racist, by arguing that colorblind is the way to go. This is why Affirmative action must go.

But saying that Affirmative Action must go is saying that the problem has been fixed. When faced with the statistics about difference concerning income, health care, and political presence, you can either believe that minorities are just that unqualified, or that the system is corrupt. Either way racism still exists today.

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I was reading the one book by Tim J. Wise called Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White. I haven't read the whole book. I've just been sampling bits and pieces of the book and thinking.

I came across one section that I think many minorities student should know about. It was about the "Stereotype Threat."

Many black, Latino, and Native American students go to college. Many of them drop out. People often say that because black and brown people drop out so much that they should be accepted into colleges. But this book gave an alternative reason that might prevent future college students from dropping out.

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I'm an anomaly. I'm the black person in my Oakland Jack and Jill chapter that grew up in Pleasanton. Very few Pleasantonians managed to get in the Oakland Bay Area chapter.

I joined Jack and Jill of America before there was a Tri-Valley chapter. Oakland was the closet chapter my family could join. This meant that in order to learn about my African American heritage I had to get on BART or drive up to Oakland and participate in activities.

Because I spent so much time In Oakland I got a feel for the city. I learned which parts were worth going to and which parts were more dangerous. I was in Jack and Jill for so long that by the time I was 18 I had been in Jack and Jill for nearly 13 years.

Because I made frequent tips to the city (about once or more a month) I was different than the other Pleasantonians. Most of the Black students at Amador Valley High went up to Oakland to go to parties, but to the rest of the Amador population, Oakland was a far distant city.

"Yah," I remember a southern European girl saying, "let's go to Oakland and get shot."
I would constantly have to defend the city, telling people that it "wasn't that bad."

"But its got the highest murder rate per capita of any city," people would say. "It's dangerous."

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