Xavier Becerra: “how sweet it would be if what my colleague, who just spoke, said were true; that we are a society based on equality of…”

“how sweet it would be if what my colleague, who just spoke, said were true; that we are a society based on equality of the laws and application of those laws. But the reality is we are not yet there, and if my colleagues do not believe it, just talk to those FBI agents. Not too long ago, African Americans who sat down at a fast food restaurant to get some food never got served. Or talk to the two young ladies in California who went to an ice cream parlor not too long ago and asked for ice cream, and were asked for ID before they would get any service whatsoever because they looked Hispanic. We are not there yet, and that is the truth about it. It would be nice to base something on merit, but numbers do not give merit. And if my colleagues have seen our public schools and they see where most minorities and poor people are, they will understand why we cannot just base things on merit, because someone can have a 4.0 in some of our inner-city schools and they cannot compete with a 3.5 from some of the suburban schools. That is where we are today. But worse than that, the amendment does not cure a real problem we have. My wife happens to be a physician, a professor of medicine at a university here, and if she stays there long enough, our three children, who are very young right now, will have an opportunity to go to that university, even if there are other children who grow up and get better grades and get better scores than my children do.”