Tag: quotas

White Dad Denied Position on School Board Over His Race

A white father was rejected from joining the San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education’s Parent Advisory Council on Tuesday, apparently due to the color of his skin.

The council had recommended Seth Brenzel, a gay white man, for the role. But following much discussion, school board Commissioner Mark Sanchez eventually pushed back the vote so that people of color could apply for the position, KGO-TV reported.

The current ethnic makeup of the PAC seemingly played a role in the school board’s decision.

“In a district that has so many monolingual families and specifically so many Chinese-speaking families, this is not OK to me,” school board Vice President Alison Collins said.

Asian-Americans currently make up a 33 percent plurality of the San Francisco Unified School District’s students, while Latinos represent 28 percent, white students 15 percent and African-Americans 6 percent, according to KGO.

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California Law Requires Diversity on Corporate Boards; Members Can ‘Self-Identify’ as Black

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law on Wednesday that requires corporations to have a minimum number of board members from “underrepresented communities” — as defined by race, gender, sexuality, and other categories of identity.

Newsom signed the new law, AB 979, along with other laws aimed at ending “systemic racism,” including a law establishing a task force to study reparations for slavery. (California never had slavery and was admitted to the Union as a free state.)

The new bill comes on top of existing legislation, signed into law in 2018, requiring that companies have a minimum number of board members who are female, or who at least identify themselves as female.

According to the legislative counsel’s digest, AB 979 requires public companies to have “a minimum of one director from an underrepresented community, as defined.”

It will also “require, no later than the close of the 2022 calendar year, such a corporation with more than 4 but fewer than 9 directors to have a minimum of 2 directors from underrepresented communities, and such a corporation with 9 or more directors to have a minimum of 3 directors from underrepresented communities.”

The text of the law defines a member of an “underrepresented community” as “an individual who self-identifies as Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Alaska Native, or who self-identifies as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.”

The law does not indicate how to distinguish someone who “self-identifies” as black from someone who is actually black, for example.

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Oscars Announce New Diversity and Inclusion Standards for Best Picture Eligibility

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced new diversity and inclusion standards for Oscars Best Picture eligibility.

For films to be considered for Best Picture, they must meet criteria that includes two of four standards: Standard A “Onscreen Representation, Themes and Narratives,” Standard B “Creative Leadership and Project Team,” Standard C “Industry Access and Opportunities” and Standard D “Audience Development.” Each standard has criteria requiring the inclusion of people in underrepresented groups, including women, people from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group, LGBTQ+ people, and people with cognitive or physical disabilities or who are deaf or hard of hearing.

For example, Standard A requires at least one of the lead actors or significant supporting actors to be from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group; the general ensemble cast must include 30 percent of actors from at least two underrepresented groups; and/or the main storyline(s) theme or narrative of the film is centered on an underrepresented group(s).

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Demands mount for racial quotas at elite US universities

Calls have been made at several elite American universities to implement racial quotas in response to the mass, multi-racial protests over the police murder of George Floyd.

An open letter to Stanford University’s president and provost, published June 19 in the Stanford Daily, demanded that by December 2021, 20 percent of all students, postdoctoral researchers, staff and faculty at the university be African American. The letter was signed by a group of professional and student organizations led by the Stanford Black Postdoc Association.

A similar open letter from current and former students at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs demanded that 25 percent of the school’s professors be black by 2022. (The letter also called for the removal of Woodrow Wilson from the school’s name, a demand to which Princeton has agreed and about which the World Socialist Web Site has previously written.)

Meanwhile, the University of California Regents, overseeing one of the top public university systems in the world, has voted to reinstate affirmative action. The decision, which will affect all public higher education in California, will ultimately be decided by a state referendum in November.

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