THE EVIDENCE SUGGESTS WE’RE WINNING:  It’s not just the polls that indicate that Proposition 16 will be defeated in California.  As the Wall Street Journal discusses here, the pro-16 folks are accusing us of being white supremacists.  That’s a sure sign they think we’re winning too.

If we do win, it will be important to shout it from the rooftops.  It will be an important reprimand to our “woke” elected leaders, not just in deep-blue California, but across the country.

COLLEGE PRESIDENT FINDS A SPINE:  Praise for Northwestern University’s Morton Schapiro.

CALIFORNIANS!  DON’T FORGET TO VOTE NO ON PROP 16:  Here’s the “NO on Prop 16” social media video that I did.  (Yes, I know.  The camera is a bit too close.  Alas, I’ve reached an age where the camera needs to be in the next county.  But I hope that the message gets through anyway.)

VOTE NO ON PROPOSITION 16:  San Francisco Bay area sports teams support discrimination on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity and national origin.  What the heck is the matter with them?

(If you are looking for a place where your donation can make a difference, this is it.  Even if every other election in the country goes badly, defeating Prop 16 will show that Americans don’t support the “woke” agenda.)

SAN DIEGO USED TO BE CONSERVATIVE:  San Diego Unified School District Changes Grading System to “Combat Racism.”   This may be the new thing in public education.

(See also racist school disciplinary policy in the name of “anti-racism.”)

O CANADA:  The faculty board at Queen’s University wants to cancel Canada’s first prime minister (for whom the law school building is currently named).  Professor Bruce Pardy opposes the move and laments the influence “critical theory” is having on Canadian culture more generally.    He writes:  “Henry Kissinger, among others, is credited with the observation that university politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.  That line is funny only if it is true.  We now know it is dead wrong.”

QUIN HILYER:  Amy Klobuchar is more concerned about hypothetical voter intimidation by conservatives than she was about the very real voter intimidation by New Black Panther Party members that took place in 2008.  Funny how that works.

(If you don’t remember the New Black Panther Party case, my Commissioner Statement on it is here.)

JOHN FUND:  Will Democrats’ silence on court-packing cost them the Senate?

JEFF JACOBY ON PROP 16:  On California’s ballot, an invitation to legalize discrimination.

QUIN HILLYER IN THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER:  Against Quotas?  Help Defeat California’s Prop 16.

MINNESOTA IS A BANANA REPUBLIC:  It seems quite likely that the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office attempted to abuse its COVID19 authority to hassle people trying to put on a program that would criticize the Minnesota Attorney General for his failure to deal with voter fraud issues.

DIVERSITY UBER ALLES:  Things don’t look too great in academic science departments these days.

PAUL MIRENGOFF:  “Please Help Preserve California’s Ban on Discrimination by the State.”

WE’RE AHEAD IN THE POLLS!:  Bill McGurn:  An Anti-Asian Proposition:  An Effort to Undo a California Ban on Racial Discrimination Is Floundering.  (If we can win in deep-blue California, we can stop the momentum of identity politics in America.  More info at No on Prop 16.)

REWARDING THOSE WHO WORK HARDER: Not all stereotypes are true. But the belief that the average Asian American student studies more than their counterparts of other races is correct. Or at the very least, that’s what students’ self-reported data reveal. According to a Brookings scholar, Asian American high school students spend about twice as much time studying as whites (almost 2 hours per day vs. almost one hour per day). As a group, they study more than three times as much as African Americans (who, on average, study a little more than a half hour per day). The amount of time Hispanics spend on studying is, on average, only slightly lower than that spent by whites.

The study found that the differences were not the result having to care for other household members. Working a job affected the numbers only slightly.

Parental education was associated with more time spent studying, but racial gaps persisted even after that factor was taken into account. Income level was also associated with time spent, but not nearly enough to account for the racial gaps.

The report goes out of its way to suggest some possible non-judgmental explanations for these numbers. It mentions the possibility that African American students are not being sufficiently challenged because of teachers’ low expectations or because too few advanced courses are being offered at their schools.

No matter what the explanation, the figures are worth noting. Time on task is hugely important to the success of nearly all kinds of human effort. Academic pursuits are no exception.

During the 1996 campaign for Proposition 209, I twice heard the argument (put forth with apparent earnestness) that race preferences in admission are necessary, because Asian American students study too much and it’s just not fair. When I heard that argument, all I could do was blink my eyes and stare.  Interestingly, that was enough to get the speakers to backpedal.

All this is one more reason for Californians to vote NO on Proposition 16 in November.

EDINBURGH CANCELS HUME:  Instapundit readers deserve a little satire today.

(The part about canceling Hume is true, of course.  Alas.)

HOT, HOT, HOT: NEW REPORT RELEASED TODAY: My progressive colleagues on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights apparently are happy to have adults with Down Syndrome lose their jobs. I wish I were teasing.

BEZOS SHOULD LISTEN TO THE RABBIS:  “100 Orthodox Rabbis to Jeff Bezos:  Stop Using Southern Poverty Law Center to Classify Hate Groups.”   (You’ll find a bit about the SPLC’s history here.)

IF PROPOSITION 16 PASSES, CALIFORNIA’S FUTURE COULD LOOK LIKE THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN IN 2005: On Saturday, I posted enrollment statistics from 1995 at UC-Berkeley. Here are statistics from the University of Michigan in 2005 (before Michigan passed its version of Proposition 209, but after the twin Supreme Court cases against the University of Michigan in 2003):

Median total SAT scores of admittees by race/ethnicity:

1160 – Black

1260 – Hispanic

1350 – White

1400 – Asian

Median high school GPA of admittees by race/ethnicity:

3.4 – Black

3.6 – Hispanic

3.9 – White

3.8 – Asian

Admission rates by race/ethnicity:

71% — Black

79% — Hispanic

62% — White

54% — Asian

The message here is if you thought race preferences in college and university admissions were just a gentle thumb on the scale in otherwise close cases, you thought wrong. And if you thought that the Supreme Court’s decisions in Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger would cause the University of Michigan to decrease the size of preferences, you thought wrong about that too. Preferences got larger instead.

These figures come from a report by Dr. Althea Nagai at the Center for Equality Opportunity.

Nagai reports that “[c]ontrolling for other factors, odds ratios showed Michigan awarding a great deal of preference to black over white applicants (70 to 1) and to Hispanics over whites (roughly 46 to 1).” On the other hand, Michigan “gave whites a small preference over Asians.” She calculated the Asian to white odds ratio at 0.69 to 1.

By contrast, controlling for race and other factors, the odds ratio of in-state over out-of-state applicants was 1.05 to 1 (which was not statistically significant).

ENOUGH READING TO LAST A LIFETIME:  Bill Ever’s has posted a great bibliography which he has titled “The Crisis in Civil Rights:  Best Books and Articles on Race, Police, and the Welfare State.”  It’s really four reading lists–one on anti-semitism, one on police reform, one on poverty and the welfare state, and one on race and civil rights.  You won’t run out of things to read.  Highly recommended.

IF PROPOSITION 16 PASSES, CALIFORNIA’S FUTURE MAY LOOK LIKE THIS: If you think that universities that engage in race-preferential admissions simply put a gentle thumb on the scale in favor of targeted minority members, here are some statistics that may surprise you:

In 1995, before the ban on race-preferential admissions, the level of preference at UC-Berkeley was very high. Here are the median math SAT scores for enrollees by race/ethnicity:

510 (blacks)

560 (Hispanics)

710 (Asians)

690 (whites)

Here are the median verbal SAT scores for enrollees by race/ethnicity:

450 (blacks)

480 (Hispanics)

590 (Asians)

600 (whites)

Here are the median high school GPAs for enrollees by race/ethnicity:

3.42 (blacks)

3.75 (Hispanics)

4.00 (Asians)

4.00 (whites)

These figures come from a report by the Center for Equal Opportunity. CEO has been prying this information out of colleges and universities for decades, but it’s only this past week that Dr. Althea Nagai has put some of the data from several schools into one summary report.

HERE WE GO AGAIN: The Boston Globe purports to be concerned that African American girls are being disciplined in school more often than white girls. If they’d looked, they probably would’ve also found that white girls are disciplined more often than Asian American girls and that boys are disciplined more often than girls. None of this, however, is proof of discrimination. The Commission on Civil Rights did a poorly reasoned report on this last year. Here is my dissent from that report, which (among other things) discusses the fact that students report their own misconduct at rates that differ by race.

A DEVASTATING CRITIQUE: A week of so ago, the New York Times ran a piece about a new study that purports to find that Proposition 209, passed back in 1996, rendered California’s under-represented minority students worse off. The implication, of course, was that California readers should vote in favor of Prop 16, which, if passed, will repeal Prop 209.

The study the NYT was heralding was done by a mere grad student and had not yet been peer-reviewed. Moreover, its findings contradicted peer-reviewed studies by distinguished economists. The latter studies had based on data that were available to any scholar who might be skeptical of their findings. By contrast, the grad student’s study was based in large part on data that he claimed to be prohibited from disclosing.

This is an excellent example of “political usefulness bias.” Has the NYT ever reported on the peer-reviewed studies that find that Prop 209 has actually increased the GPAs and graduation rates of under-represented minorities? Or increased the numbers of under-represented minority STEM majors? Of course not. What about the peer-reviewed studies that suggest Prop 209 is likely to have increased bar passage rates for minorities? Perish the thought that the NYT would report such things.

On Tuesday, Dr. Richard Sander presented a devastating critique of the student study. Among other things, it seems that when the student did use publicly available data, he used the wrong data.

But here’s the kicker: The University of California Office of the President admits that the data came from it and that the student was acting as its employee. Well … there’s a history to this. UCOP had previously denied scholars like Sander—who is a UCLA professor—access to the data (while allowing access to other scholars access). In yesterday’s LA Times, the story contains this quote:

“Why is [UC], which is prohibited from engaging in political activity, allowing its confidential data to be used in an amateurish, inaccurate paper that has been prominently injected into a political debate, for what certainly looks [like] an attempt to influence the fate of Prop. 16. on the November ballot?” [UCLA Law Professor Richard] Sander asked. “It’s not hard to connect the dots and see that the university is using its data as a political weapon, to be withheld from objective scholars who might report ‘”inconvenient truths.'”

Why indeed.

“NO on PROP 16” WARRIORS COULD USE AN INSTALANCHE:  Can I ask a favor?  If you have just a second, I’m told clicking on the Californians for Equal Rights/NO on 16 web site will help our Google ranking.  If you have more than a second, then by all means take a look around the website.

If you still haven’t heard about Prop 16, this OC Register editorial is a quick read.

(p.s. THANK YOU to all of you who have already contributed to our campaign.  Instapundit readers really are the best.)

SLAVERY OR FREEDOM:  THE CONCEPTION OF AMERICA:  This sounds like an interesting program.  A number of great people will be participating, including Bill Allen, Chuck DeVore, Peter Kirsanow, Wilfred Reilly, Peter Wood, and Cathy Young, all of whom are very much worth listening to.  Here’s the program description:

How should we teach American history?  The New York Times’ 1619 Project and associated curriculum disseminated by the Pulitzer Center teaches a polemical narrative of oppression, shorn of nuance, context, or historical accuracy.  Yet this narrative has had success in persuading minds across the nation and beyond that the “America the exceptional nation” story is wrong,  misguided and fails to tell the whole truth. …

This webinar conference will address how we understand and teach America’s founding:  should we place the ideals of liberty or the institution of slavery as the foundation of American history?

It takes place over the course of five days, September 14-18 and it sponsored by the Alexander Hamilton Institute, the Texas Public Policy Institute and the National Association of Scholars.  Watch a little or a lot.