Political Quotes

“here we go again. The gentleman from California (Mr. Riggs) and his extreme right-wing friends are attempting to polarize and divide this Nation by pitting citizens of this country one against another. The gentleman from California would have Members believe that somehow whites are being disadvantaged by affirmative action and African Americans and Latinos and others are at a great advantage, and they are getting all of the slots in these schools. Let me give the actual numbers that we have not heard for the University of California. In 1997, out of 44,393 students on nine campuses, guess how many were African Americans? 1,509. There were 5,685 Latino students out of these 44,393. In 1988, 1,243 are African-American, and 5,294 are Latino students. This is with affirmative action, nine campuses. He gave some figures, and he told us about UC Riverside, but what he did not tell us was this: that black undergraduate admissions dropped 66 percent in UC Berkeley, 43 percent at UCLA, 46 percent at UC San Diego, and 36 percent at UC Davis. These are the prestigious campuses. Latino undergraduate admissions dropped by 40 percent at UC Berkeley, 33 percent at UCLA, 20 percent at UC San Diego, and 31 percent at UC Davis. The gentleman from California (Mr. Riggs) and his supporters mischaracterized the admissions process and its reliance on race.”