PS102

3/2/99

March two.

Well we finished up on the interfaces, did we not,

through the -- and I guess it's about time to talk about --

well, I know affirmative action. Did I get into defining

affirmative action? Did I get to -- decision? Bakke?

Okay. What we were trying to identify were the conflicts

between equality and liberty. We also are identifying to

you that well today we push equality, the framers of the

Constitution emphasized liberty. And in the last thirty

years the push for equality has been done through

affirmative action. A catch phrase that has a lot of people

upset, a lot of people, and becomes a great excuse for the

white people. I mean I keep hearing from whites, "I didn't

get the job because of affirmative action," and almost

wouldn't have got the job no matter what color they were;

they were losers. I'm sorry. I just -- bias an excuse.

There have been cases where quotas have been used. It's

-- that's a big problem with affirmative action, people

using it as an excuse. Okay. White people using it as

excuse and of course under represented people -- notice

again I didn't use -- Affirmative action is giving

preferences to individuals from groups who have been denied

access to power who were under represented. When there is

equal or near equal qualification, and last time in class we

tried to identify that also people complained about

minorities quote/unquote or better under represented people

getting benefits, but they never seem to complain about

athletes getting benefits. Did we not talk about that?

No? Oh, well, this fellow in my class yesterday who

actually attends Stanford this year -- because he wanted to

take the political science here because he heard of me.

Just teasing. And the fact that his roommate is a track

star at Stanford who got into there with a 3.0 average and a

950 S.A.T. Score. Now that's not near equal. To get into

Stanford you need 4.0 and generally around 1400 S.A.T.

However, exceptions are made for athletes, but how do they

survive? Well my son and I went down when he graduated high

school. The coach from Berkeley was recruiting him. The

soccer coach asked him to come down to the campus and wanted

to give us the pitch. Well my son graduated with a 3.6, may

have been a little higher if you adjust, but it wasn't a

Berkeley 4.4 average which is what you need to get into

Berkeley out of high school with everything else. So I

looked at the coach -- I knew the answer, but I asked, "Can

you get him in?" He said with a 3.6, of course. He said as

a soccer player, I can get him in with a 3.2 and if he were

a football player, I could get him in with a 2.0. I looked

at him and I said, now I expressed my disgust, I never kept

my mouth shut. If he wanted my kid he would have taken him

anyway. You know, this is big business. And it is. It's

money. Football, at Cal. Alumni money. And I said what

happens if he has a little problem with English, know the

course and I had to clarify that. And he said, we have

tutors. They have tutoring sessions every Friday for the

athletes and on top of that we will provide a private tutor

paid for by the alumni. They also have special academic

counsellors for the athletes for each sport. So that they

can get the right classes in case any are too tough. Now

let me tell you, they still get a Berkeley degree if they

finish. Of course the problem was they didn't finish. Now

there's a big concern of schools pushing athletes to

complete. In fact, that is funny in a sense.

I was at the University of Arizona at which he is

tournament in 1989, Arizona State in 96 and I knew the and I

so I had seen him in year or so so I went to see him and he

was talking to the football coach who was brand new at that

time in 89. I think it's different now. And the basketball

coach had been there, had a successful couple of years.

They were laughing, not just about his salary, was $500,000

a year and that doesn't include $100,000 from Nike or

whatever the foot company was throwing into the program, the

shoe company. $500,000 a year. There's no professor at any

campus that makes $500,000 a year as a salary. But the funny

part that they were laughing is that he had a stipulation in

his contract that he would get a bonus for every athlete he

graduated. So to push him to make sure his athletes stayed

in school, they gave him extra money. Now what I'm saying

basically is when I hear complaints about affirmative action

I sort of push it aside and say if they gave that kind of

tutor if they put that kind of money in they could take the

people from the ghetto with 2.0 and get them better jobs,

but that's not what I'm -- you know, proposing here. My

attitude is that I don't think your reduce Stanford are

athletes either. It shouldn't be reduced for nobody that's

the whole point. Academics should be the standard we're

talking about at these schools.

Are there schools that maintain standards? There are a

few. But the problem with affirmative action the problem

with athletes the problem with professors kids is that the

standards have been reduced. What am I talking about?

Professors' kids. Most will allow our children to go to

that campus or alumnus kids with far lower GPA if your

parent teaches at Stanford you can get in at 3.0, not a 4.0.

However, if you don't get into Stanford and your parents

work there, even if they're not in the faculty, they will

pay half your tuition at any college you go to in the

country. Not a bad country. That's not fair. Well that's

my whole point. This process isn't fair, and so when we --

but yet, we seem to complain about and when we hear about

the kind of complaints we hear. One can't help but say,

racism. But we're killing to accept that without complain.

My point is that I want to complain about both and I want to

make it clear that bodies really to me are extremely

bothersome. Would I take it? Sure, I'd take the money.

That's not the point. Well, you know, interestingly, what

I'm saying is I don't have any ethics. This is back many

years ago. When affirmative action was really being abused

even more so than it has been and he was a straight A

student at Ohlone, he was from the Philippines. He had left

under Marco. His family was active politically, but he

wasn't on the -- he didn't keep a 4.0 there. He probably

had a 3.7 3.6 which is -- me a year ago maybe fifteen

twenty years else he was here on e mail. He's back in

Philippines but he wanted to go to law school. So he took

the S.A.T exams. He got 756 on them. Obviously an

outrageously high score. What he wrote to the law schools

he wrote, when you consider me for admission I do not want

to be considered under minority admissions. I worked hard so

you have seen my scores and grades. I don't want to be

degraded by accepting in minority admissions. If you take

into account diversity, please take into account I'm from

the Philippines. Now it sounds hypocritical, but he was

dead serious. Because diversity is a factor inequality. We

always have to deal with different kinds of diversity. And

what proves his ethics and I said I don't have, is he

received a full scholarship to Cornell which is one of the

Ivy League law schools on minority admissions. He turned it

down. And went to Ratgers in New Jersey on a partial

scholarship simply because they took him in open

enrollment. He felt it would be degrading. He had ethics

and I'm saying I mean I don't know how many of us, I know I

wouldn't. I would have taken -- it is very hard when you

deal with that. We live in a society with the expensive

stuff and I gave those kind of people credit for their

consistency, but that's one of the problems. People can

easily abuse it and as I said, make excuses while they abuse

it. Not just whites using it, and abusing it. But another

example --

Q My brother-in-law got a job in Sacramento as a fire

fighter and he had been applying in Fremont and Newark for

the last five years and his mother was born in Hawaii before

it became a state, so he was able to claim that he was a

Hawaiian citizen, but technically he is even though he's one

hundred percent white and a friend of his who also moved to

Sacramento applied for the same job who put white on the

paperwork, my brother-in-law got the job. Personally my

opinion only because he put on this --

A Doubt it.

Because Hawaii is not recognized, unless Polynesian as

an under represented group. It just blew me away that

somebody was on paperwork might say something, but at the

same time most of the people that I know are actually been

Anglo and I know a lot of the minorities have been turned

down.

I knew this kid who hadn't even gone through college who

was a big white kid and he got on the Oakland police. When

I heard this Korean guy say he got turned down and was

saying well some other white guy because affirmative

action. It may be more difficult, but if you've got the

standards and you're going to get the job, I'm sorry where

it is. Unless it's one of the institution where you got

poor management and quotas and I don't think you want to

work there any way. We talk about guidelines. I'm dead.

I'll talk about that, but, you know, we use it. We abuse

it. Did I talk about the individual that sued Ohlone

college because he got turned down for a division deanship

here? Cost the school a fortune. The guy was African

American and we needed -- we were hiring a dean for our

division. And the guy retired, and the head of committee is

Mildred White. Now she's African American. We had two

Hispanics on the committee, a number of women, and an

Asian. On the committee besides this Anglo who did the

interviewing and today one of the nice parts about

affirmative action, it requires you to ask the same

questions to everybody.

Years ago you come in for a job, I always knew I'd get a

job because I knew when I went into the interview I could

change the topic into something interested in and we'd talk

the whole time about the topic and never about the job. I

think you can still pull that, but on the major jobs like

teaching today you can't. Because when you go for your

initial interviews there's a set of questions that you are

-- that everybody has to be asked so that you have

consistencies. But I don't know if I'd get

a job today. Okay.

In any case, we usually pull a certain number of people

in for an interview of the sixty or fifty applications and

this is what you do and a lot of the hiring not just in

teaching and we choose seven to bring to interview.

Interestingly, of the seven two dropped out who were women

so we really didn't have any women, but we had a real

diverse group. Actually, three women minorities and one was

Asian, two were Hispanic and the other two were white. The

majority. And the one black guy -- I'm sorry, so it was

only one white -- whatever it was. The way -- well, this

guy was an older guy in the sense that he had been around

education for many years but he had not taught in the

classroom for many years and we can't have a classroom

teacher in action. He hadn't taught in 20 years. He had all

these nice educational lingo and we didn't like it. When

people start using educational lingo you begin to say this

is the kind of administration those of you who were not in

education -- he had every word down. He knew every phrase

of what was going on in the education books. That's scary.

Well, in any case, he was not sent up to the president.

The president usually requires that we send up three names

without ranking them so he can choose. This is power of the

president. Well we actually sent up four names including a

person I thought would get the position basically because he

was Asian and he was coming from San Francisco City College.

However when he found out he had to teach and wasn't going

to get extra money from it, I understood he dropped out. We

hired a Hispanic and that happens to be Ron Quinta who many

know from biology. He was the one that was hired from the

post. Any of you had Ron Quinta? One of the tragedies,

he's a good great teacher. Because he wasn't became an

administrator. This guy went to the equal opportunity and

charged that the committee had been radically biased against

him. What the school had to do was they had to go through

five years of records to show that we did not, that we had

hired diverse people on the campus. We had to have the

lawyers writing back and forth various briefs, it must have

cost the school $50,000 just because this guy files a

complaint which hadn't gone into the lawsuit yet. Each of

us who were on the committee had to be interviewed, our

statements had to be taken. Our reasons were given within,

you know, all of that kind of stuff because he filed. So it

has become a very expensive process. Translation: It has

been abused. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. The

real problem is how do you mend it?

But let me get back to the whole issue. Because as I

said I'm a supporter of affirmative action, what do we mean

by equal or near equal? A 3.9 and somebody with a 4.0 to me

is near equal. Maybe the 4.0 is one as I may have said they

probably had me as the teacher and lost the extra point.

Now, when you're dealing with that kind of a difference, you

have to take into account other kinds of things. You take

into account whether they work, you know -- well you people

who were -- going to college. One of the things the Anglos

don't understand about the Asian community is that the Asian

community knows how to do their application. Their parents

will go to pay for them. They're going to make sure they

make extra money. The Anglo come from non education

families and say I'm not putting the mortgage on my home the

on way your going to do is work for it. They may not on

your S.A.T scores are on, but these the Asian community

speak among themselves and what do they do? Start the

eighth, seventh and eighth grade, forgetting the students

and the academic grades. They make sure their children go

out and work in volunteer projects. They work in the

hospitals, in the community centers, volunteer time, looks

good on the application. They know this. They go out for

track. They go out for badminton. They go out for swimming

because nobody gets cut. I'm not joking.

All right, all you Asians can throw things at me. You

want to call it bias? It's on the record, they get this

stuff down. It's not the 4.0, they are well aware. They're

going to be on those committees. They are going to be doing

dance stuff or the dance. They're going to be doing the

yearbook stuff because they know that that diversity is

necessary, right? Okay I say it the way it is. I'm not

going to get fired for this, maybe. But the fact is that it

it's a knowledgeable kind of thing. That is a understanding

of what it takes to get into the schools and that's why you

tend to have to decide on those issues. I may have said that

last time.

I told my older son that he could much easier get into a

good school on the east coast than the west coast because

they want diversity. A student coming from Mission has a

4.0 has less chance than somebody from New York with a 4.0

because they pull people in from other parts of the country

because they want the diversity and then they can say they

have alumni. All of this is a factor that people don't yell

well I didn't get into college because I didn't get into

volunteer work. They yell because of affirmative action and

in most cases it's not it's all of this other kind of

activities that become important because they figure that in

many ways if you are active, then you are going to be a

productive member of society too. If you are people now you

came from that school and that school will get the

reputation that will pull more people in. Now, what

happens? Well for many years what often happened was that

they always, administrators fearful of the need for

diversity in jobs, in schools began to in a sense reduce

standards. By setting quotas or guidelines. At least

unofficial ones. They were official ones too. Now that was

what created many of the problems. Because it opened the

door to abuse. Abuse that I would take advantage of. Just

like your friend did.

If Hawaii is a minority, put it in other list if I am

Hawaiian. Okay? Many Jews who had Hispanic surnames

because they came from Spain, they were kicked out of Spain

in 1492, their families haven't lived anywhere near Spanish

lands. They don't, but they have names like Sanchez,

Garcia, Gonzalez, put down their names, put down their

Spanish heritages and were getting in as Latinos.

Absolutely not what affirmative action is. A friend

graduating back with my son from Mission high, he was 6 foot

3, blond, blue eyed, um, his name was Montoya. He had no

background in a latino culture. His family had come back in

the colonial days from Spain settling in this area and he

got into Berkeley with a 3.2 because the name goes on the

list as Hispanic. Now that was abusive and those are the

problems that people heard and people were concerned about.

And also the other abuse that was reversing and it has been

a problem too was the fact that many people who had the

grades and diversity could not get in because of those kinds

of abuses.

Years ago Jews had limitations. My brother got turned

down in Princeton because they had reached their quota of

Jews. Lole high school stopped Asians coming in. Only

forty percent were allowed in. That was just last week in

the paper. They finally got rid of that. So if you've got

communities who have the standard, why are we pulling the

standards away? What do we do to get the other people up

the standard? Now what I am I saying? Well on the

educational level, obviously Asians are not under

represented. However, where will we say Asians are a

minority under represented? When we talk about such things

as in administration. You don't see many Asians even on the

faculties of some of these institutions and that makes a

difference. Where else do you see it? Well, look at

television. How many Asians do you see? On television if

you see many African American TV shows, but you don't see

very many latino TV shows. A few, and certainly don't see

many Asians and when they are there, they're made fun of in

one way or another. Like on the Simpsons. And so we create

even worse stereotypes there which is the point of what we

mean that has to somehow be changed when we talk about

representation.

So let me take this to a higher plain perhaps, well, no,

let me stay with the standard for a second. Sometimes

standards were false. They kept certain groups out. For

instance, in New York, to be on the police force thirty

years ago you had to be a minimum of five foot eight. Now

you got to understand in New York that is the average

height. In California, it's five ten. You people eat better

oranges, I don't know. Whatever it is. I love going back

to New York. I only I feel average there. You know,

however at least I used to feel average until I shrunk. But

however, the issue was that it kept off a lot of minority.

Granted when minorities live here for a number of years

their height increase from the diet. But this was not very

much the case in New York not only is the diet poor, but you

still have a lot of immigrant groups. It also kept women

from the police force. Was it legitimate? The answer was

apparently no. Because when they got rid of the size

requirement, they had many minorities who always a different

kind of power of the respect from their own communities.

And the whole point of affirmative action was to get people

from the community to go into the community to create roll

models to understand the community not to give somebody a

degree whose family hasn't been in Spain for 400 years

because you know that person isn't going to benefit the

community and they're not going to be seen or they don't

identify with the community. They're not seen as Hispanic

by the Hispanic community. And women coming into the police

force, they found them very sued for police work in areas

domestic disputes for example. They seem to handle it better

than the macho cop who wants to beat the hell out of the

male. Doesn't understand the female response and that's the

reality of some of the things that happen, but where are the

standards? Where should they be kept?

One of the things we talk about, fire fighters.

San Francisco fire fighters were constantly being attacked.

the fire fighters in San Francisco had no women on the fire

fighters. Very few minorities. The exam is given and

they're usually about a hundred or so, but there are very

few, but the San Francisco fire fighters were notorious for

hiring people among the families it was a family business if

you had a relative on it, you got it on. You work as a fire

fighter for a while. And the test is pretty physically

strenuous and women were failing it. The women started

arguing that the it wasn't a standard of the work they

brought in experts to show it was the standards you know

climbing the ladder body hose dragging you that kind of

stuff running up you know, you've been the towers and so,

they argued that's why women couldn't get it because they

weren't doing it well. Women in San Francisco who wanted to

be fire fighters began going to gyms, maybe taking

steroids. On the next exam, seventy women passed it. And

although some of them were in the top ten, some of them were

on the next ten to twenty. They still did not hire any

women. Which makes you question then whether it is sexism

or not. Because if we can sigh it is pretty equal, you've

got a hundred people, two hundred passing, you've got women

up there maybe you can open the door. Because what is best

qualified mean? And that's the point. Diversity makes a

factor of the qualification. Of course there are those

groups that do worse, and in their fear of being sued, they

create systems that are almost meaningless you can quote me

on this, the people who were going to hate me dramatically.

I think the way to get into our nursing program is the

stupidist system I have ever seen now. I don't know how many

of you -- anybody here going into nursing? You are not

aware of it, because of fears of because of arguments of

suits because of question of what best qualified meant, the

nursing department rather than making the decision does a

lottery system. The names are thrown into a computer wheel

and they were pulled out if they have met the requirements.

So what they are using now is not best qualified that

anybody is qualified meaning C or above. Average. And so

that way they avoid the question of interview of bias and

they can say well our nursing students passed the state

exam. In any case, which is true, they have an excellent --

it bothers. See, me, I'd much rather have a person with an

A in biology then one with a C in it as my nurse. I much

rather have somebody interview and say this person works

well with patients rather than simply have a wheel decide.

The strangest part about the system is that they throw your

name in twice if you live in Fremont or Newark. Because

it's the Fremont Newark community college system. It has,

you know, and granted right now there is a need for nurses.

They're pulling in a lot of people, but they haven't been

getting nearly as many. We used to have forty positions and

two hundred applicants. Now they're having trouble getting

applicants, but it still runs into my question of

avoidance.

The fear of suit has created problems of not wants to

make decisions as to who you think would be better in the

field. Because it can be argued bias. How do you prove that

was a fair interview? How do you prove this? These factors

are there. Okay and so, with our classes here at Ohlone now

we can't put prerequisites on those classes until also

unless we can prove it's a necessary course for the class.

We can set prerequisites in the same departments so you

can't take math 152 unless you pass whatever it is or some

back what's math 52 algebra two? Which is intermediate two

now that makes sense you don't have to prove that, but for

example, if I decided that to really do well in this class

it would be better to have students that passed English

101A. I can't put that down as a prereq anymore unless I do

a study for three years to show that students will only pass

the class if they've taken English 101A. So we do have to

do students studies and some may benefit but -- as I said,

years ago when it first started, it was far worse. People

would come into my class and getting Bs and I would be

saying to them, hey you're not going to get on. And he said

yeah I am. I'm a minority. I'll get into medical school in

fact. And when people think like that it's extremely

dangerous. It's unhealthy because he wasn't going to get

into medical school because people begin to believe and

abuse it and so what did the courts decide?

Well, the first case of that really happened with

affirmative action issue came to the Supreme Court in 1977.

By the way, I am expressing all biases here. If you haven't

noted. I don't ask you to agree with me. So that we're

clear that this is not required for you to regurgitate back

at me. In 1977, a man name Bakke -- and it's under the

University of California v Bakke on your word list -- sued

earlier. He had sued the University of California Davis.

Because he was denied admission to medical school. Bakke

was a white man. Davis had in an attempt to create

affirmative action set up a quota system. Of the one

hundred positions open for medical school, 16 of them had to

be filled by minorities.

I had a professor many years ago who one of the students

asked do you curve our -- do you grade on a curve? His

response was if I had a class of a hundred baboons that

means I'd have to give ten A's. I'm not about to do that.

And in a sense, maybe that's what happened with the quotas.

Because what happened in a sense was Bakke was denied

admission. Had he better grades, grade point average, then

any of the 16 minorities admitted well what happens was he

had better grades than open enrollment some who were -- why

was he turned down? The school doesn't have to tell you why

it turns you down. It could have been many factors including

diversity. It may have been and some people have said it

may have been his average. Medical schools are notorious for

not wanting to take people in their 30s. He was in his 30s.

He could prove there was a quota against whites. He sued. It

was Bakke originally university of the California Davis but

he won it in the California Supreme Court. It was the first

what we called reverse discrimination suit. Saying that he

was being discriminated against because he was white. The

university of the California appealed the decision so the

Supreme Court in a very close five/four vote, 9 US Supreme

Court agreed with the California Supreme Court that this

quota was reverse discrimination and they said that quotas

were illegal because it reduced standards. They didn't put

it in those words, but that was the implication. However,

they did say that affirmative action was not illegal, that

you could consider diversity. So that if you want to weigh

individuals because of their race or their agenda they could

take that into account and choose from. It does not outlaw

affirmative action at all. But it said that you still

should be picking the best person based on your standard,

not because you have set aside certain positions.

So basically quotas were outlawed. So what did schools

do? They set up guidelines. We need there are twenty

percent Hispanics living in the community, therefore twenty

percent of the people should be Hispanic. Now the

government in many cases went crazy with that guideline but

because in one guy's factory he had about fifty percent of

his employees were African American and about ten percent

were Hispanic. However, the community which was only about

ten percent African American had twenty percent Hispanics

they charge him with racial discrimination because he didn't

have enough Hispanics working there. And they did an

investigation. So you know do we do it on the community

standard. Do we do it on the state wide standards? Do we

do it national statistics? So guidelines almost became

quotas especially when used by administrators who want to

look good by statistics of affirmative action.

In 1978 another court case came to the Supreme Court. It

also reflects part of my attitude. It was Weber v Kaiser

Steel, New Orleans. Kaiser had been attacked for not having

any African Americans in skilled labor positions or

management. They argued it was because of the community and

so to compensate for what they were lacking, they set up a

special training program to train African American welders.

To train African Americans to be welders, they didn't higher

them. They did pay for their training. Well it is a very

expensive skill to learn and it's a high paid skill. It

takes a long time to really become good at it. So they took

in people to train who were minority under represented. A

man name Weber who was a white man applied for the program.

He was working at Kaiser; he was turned down. Because

basically he was white. Kaiser charged that he had had as

all white man did in New Orleans but he had the opportunity

to take it in high school but the program in New Orleans was

under not open to blacks. Therefore, they were making up

for a past wrong. They were redressing a grievance. The

Supreme Court reviewed it and said it was okay. Since they

were not hiring unskilled labor, but training people, they

were tutoring people to bring them up to standards so that

they could get diversity in their plan. In other words, it

is fine to create diversity by training people by educating

them. Opening up bridge programs. But it's amazing how

people use that as a rational sometimes. For the reasoning

that they're not doing well. Many people in the bridge

programs fell out too, but at least they're trying to bring

them up to standards in some way.

The whole community college system was established as a

bridge program. Sometimes sadly we're often seen as a

remedial because we've often so many courses and in some

ways the high schools not only fail minorities, sometimes

majorities as well or students are aren't doing the work

they should be and so we offer many courses that are not

transferable to bring them up to standard, but there's

nothing wrong with that. It's the body of American

education that people who didn't mature until later screwed

around in school now can go on in many institutions. In

many countries like England the system is that you take your

test at eleven. You don't pass that test to go on to the

academic schools or off to a trade school. You're out of

school and that's it, never again, from eleven on your life

is determined. And a lot of countries have that kind of

standards. The United States and Germany as well. Opens the

doors to adult students.

Some of you in this class are not the average age of the

students usually. 18 or 19. I mean eighteen or nineteen. I

remember everybody was eighteen when we had that woman in

class who was 28 and we saw her as that old lady. We

couldn't believe that this whole woman of 28 was going back

to school. But today, it is not uncommon. In fact

especially in the evening program it is -- we have more

students of the average school average now but years we go

we had a lot of reentry students, as they're called, back

taking advantage of the GI bill. In fact this woman who was

running the student government for one semester, she came

here in her forties, she graduated Ohlone at forty and went

onto Smith college. And lived in the dorm with all the

eighteen and nineteen year olds, and not many colleges

already not many countries that that can happen and you can

knock American education all you want, but the fact is where

we fail we tried to make it up in redress grievance. And

that's why we have so many people from other countries

trying to get into our schools because they know they can do

it here and not there.

Positive statement which a lot of the people tend to

forget about the open door element of our progress. I forgot

where I was going? I'm not going to make her read back. I

was dealing with -- I guess I was dealing with Weber v

University of California. How we create a bridge for many

people to feel complete their education and that's what we

should be doing spending machine in those schools. So that

those programs become -- to standard there is no reason that

Mission high school should have better programs than

Irvington. Not better, more academically enhanced. But if

they don't -- people are complaining about going there with

the difference here not because they're fearful of what

they've heard. Mission has a reputation, perhaps

undeserved. I found that teachers there were mostly -- we

well they had some good ones many retired last year, but I

was amazed. My kids never did say like until they got to

Mission. Candidly and I saw that on the -- you to open

school night you can see, you can read a teacher right

away. It's not hard. My son's biology teacher last

semester, she stood up there in open school now reading her

notes from this card and I said God this is deadly. And she

was. Absolutely didn't know what was going on in that

biology class didn't even have the right answers for exams.

Kids actually put up a web site dedicated to her goofs.

Q There's a lot of teachers like that in Mission. That

was an example. And the problem is that you know people look

at it and say blue ribbon school. We want to move into this

area to go to Mission and what is it that makes the school

great? You know it's the students because the people are

moving in to go there. If those same people go to Irvington

is they don't have a facility, they don't offer the Calculus

courses so they've got to equal rights. We've got to prevent

that ability for those students who want to and ask me those

environment.

Concerned with the new approach to affirmative action

that's a game that Governor Davis is pushing and that is

that the University of California system will take in the

top four percent from each school and the others won't be

able to go. Well the top four percent from some schools

would be in the bottom ten percent of others academically

and so in a sense that will be depriving large number of

academic people and maybe in a different way reducing

standards. I think we have to look at academics; we have to

look at financial need. As well as minorities who were

truly minorities in the sense over under represented so that

they can be going back into their community as

representatives of the communities as roll models.

I think the greatest thing for American blacks in many

ways was the Anita Hill hearings. Most of you were too

young to remember when she charged Judge Thomas, when he was

being appointed to the Supreme Court with sexual

harassment. On TV, a whole parade of Yale educated lawyers

and judges were then interviewed and put on and they were

all African Americans. When you see that, you begin to

realize that this is there. Some of you may have heard the

name Malcolm X? I don't know if anybody read the

biography. When he was in junior high school he went to his

guidance counselor and he said, "I'd like to be an

attorney." and she said forget it. There's no way any black

is going to get into law school, so why don't you go on and

do something more practical like drive a truck. And that's,

you know, whether this was a true story or just reported by

Alex Heely who wrote the biography. The fact is it does

reflect what happened years back and so if you have people

that you can see then you can inspire others to realize that

they can go on and they can do their kind of achievement and

that's why one of my favorite people in America, not because

who's very much hated by many people in the black community,

is Jessie Jackson. Now he is radical, but he constantly

pushes education, and the need to achieve. And what it

means to go on and it's hard for you to comprehend this.

But community family peers in more so peers can spoil

people's chances for success.

A friend of mind quite young at the time in the 1960s

became head of the job corps, one of the job programs set up

by Kennedy and Johnson, it was to train people in skilled

labor from the ghettoes specifically take people and skill

labor meant driving a truck, not just pushing a card or

selling drugs, you know, but you know going on and getting a

job where you got good pay. They found that the biggest

problem they confronted is this they would train these

people they would give them the skill the people would go

back home and they would be told that they were trying to go

above them and they'd never get hired and they gave it up

and they went back to pushing drugs or a cart. Despite the

training and so the whole community element needs the roll

models so the people can see those individuals out there and

they can say to themselves, no, it's not true. I can be

like that. And that's what affirmative action was meant to

do when we talk about level the playing fields. It's not

just about getting jobs, but creating role models.

Okay. I've done my sermonizing today on that issue, but

I made some points I hope. Whether you agree or not is --

on the chart as well is the issue of majority right,

minority rule. Something that sounds good but needs to be

clarified. You can't have a democracy if you cut off some

people. Everybody should have a right to achieve equal

opportunity. If you eliminate minorities then they don't

have a right to become a majority. Many years ago my wife

took political science at San Jose State, had an exam and

the question was if the people vote to take away the right

to vote from read-headed people, would it still be a

democracy since they voted to do it? That's a good

question. Of course you know that if you were to get that

question you would first think about what? The chart. Yes

now you know that. Good; good. Okay. Um, you can't cut

off the group. Our constitution was design to protect

minorities, to preserve liberty, more so to create equality.

I told you the framers of constitution, you the people as a

danger because they saw them as ruling through passion. The

minority however that they were going to protect was

themselves. Rich and the well-born. Let's face it and the

framers of constitution would preserve the rich and the

well-born however it is of course being used to die to

protect groups that may have larger numbers the groups we

all under represented. The minorities, if you will. The

same Constitution with very few changes.

There have been historically only 27 amendments to that

original living document. Why is that amazing? It's

amazing because in California every year I think we get 27

amendments to our Constitution. Most countries have had

numerous constitutions in their history. The nation of

Bolivia since it's founding in about 1820s has had sixty

constitutions. Even the Soviet Union before it collapsed

had had four. We have had two? Two? Yeah. What was the

first one again? Articles of Confederation, which went out.

We talked about a lot went out of existence with the new

constitution the one way now of in 1789. The constitution

was written in 1787 as a convention in Philadelphia. During

the summer, late spring, and summer. Finish on September

16th and sent to the states. Perhaps illegally, originally

they had agreed they were going to send it back to the

articles legislature. The Articles of Confederation. The

Articles of Confederation in fact required a unanimous vote

for any amendment and a two thirds vote for any legislation

passed that was near impossible and the constitution was

sent out requiring a two thirds, a three quarter vote of the

states or at least nine of the thirteen states to ratify

it. And it was supposed to go back and it didn't. So it

violated the Articles, the meaning was to have a convention

to amend the articles and they went and wrote a whole new

constitution. It almost didn't pass. Many states was very

close until the framers of constitution agreed to add a Bill

of Rights. The framers of the constitution said you don't

need a Bill of Rights if we didn't take it however, the

people argued we don't trust the government. We want a Bill

of Rights. The original Articles of Confederation were

designed against the tierny of one King George the third it

was a designed to prevent a dictator in America. The new

constitution was designed not only against the tierny of one

or the amendment. It was to protect the few against the

many to preserve liberty. The Articles were working, but he

had created thirteen separate countries. And there were

many problems that you read about. So this was an attempt

to bring the country together. One of the things that

inspired the convention with people to show up was Shays's

Rebellion. Shays's Rebellion in 1786 the back farmers of

Massachusetts because their land was being confiscated by

the banks by the land holdings I mean the money lenders and

there was no national army to go put them down. There was no

military force except for the militia in Massachusetts and

interestingly the governor of Massachusetts at the time was

Sam Adams who had lead the son of liberty he was a

revolutionary, but now he lead the force to put down the

revolution. It scared the wealthy. They were also scared

because were sitting on their lands. George Washington for

example owned land and what was now West Virginia out in

Ohio they were very wealthy and people were then and they

want to stop that. They want to protect their property and

their wealth. So they created a document to preserve the

minority.

I remember become about 1982 at -- is Amador high school

in Livermore? It was at Amador high school that two -- no,

I'm sorry. Three women sued because they were going to have

a prayer at graduation and they argued that that prayer was

unconstitutional that they didn't. You remember it? Yeah

I'm always glad that sometimes we get these older people

that remember these -- that I don't make these things up. I

remember reporter speaking to one of women and saying -- you

know how reporters can attack? How can you stop all those

hundreds of students from graduating who want to have a

prayer this is a country where the majority rule and if the

majority wants a prayer they should have one and that's what

your constitution was established to create and she said,

"no, you don't understand our constitution. You need to go

back and take a history lesson that our constitution was

written to preserve the minority and we are the minority

against majority tierny." and there was a lot of truth to

that because the constitution was not just to protect the

minority. The Bill of Rights in the First Amendment also

gets it established religion we are protected from religion

as well.

Translation: The school system can't make you pray.

They can't write a pray. They can't make you a catholic.

They can't make you a Baptist in the classroom. You you can

pray in class any time you want. You will be -- but that is

not the same as if I say to you let's get down on our knees

now and pray before you take my exam. The knowledge we have

of the constitution in its workings is limited originally.

Because the convention was closed we couldn't do this today

we have leaks we have cameras we have people being

interviewed reporters staking their cameras against the

windows to see what was happening in the Philadelphia in the

hot summer in a small room. I was shocked when I went to

Constitution Hall because I expected a big room where they

would sit around and talk. It's a small little room.

You've seen it? I think more shocking, there was two things

that happened had he in any of my visits one was

Constitution Hall which I expected to be big the other was

the Mona Lisa. It's not just a picture it's small and it

was green because with the coloring of the thing they may

have cleaned it up since I saw it and all these people were

around it and I expected to see this massive portrait. It

was very disappointing.

Did you know that the whole point about Mona Lisa's

smile? They've been trying to figure out for years.

They've been figuring for years and what it means -- well a

few years ago a woman took the computer to try and analyze

the various people and you know what she found out? That

the Mona Lisa is Leonardo DiVinchi in drag in a reverse drag

you know how he wrote in mirror image? Well apparently he

was painting himself in drag and that's the real secret of

the Mona Lisa's smile. I read about it. Again I just want

to verify I don't make these things up. Thank you Paul. Why

they brought up on the internet. Know I've got the article

as well.

You know, irrelevant, but just a little side light to

historical base. In any case, we do have some knowledge

thanks to James Madison who can keep some notes, he was our

third president, is often known as the Father of the

Constitution. Third president? Our fourth president. Spit

out too fast. I expect to get corrected on those things.

Our fourth president. Washington, Adams, Jefferson,

Madison. He also was involved in writing the Federalist

Papers. The Federalists Papers were a series of papers

written in New York state under Greek and Roman names

anonymously by Madison, Alexander Hamilton from the Aaron

Burr commercial, when he was shot by Aaron Burr. You

remember that commercial? That's the best commercial ever.

And a man name John Jay, but he became your first Supreme

Court Chief Justice. They wrote these documents. Most were

written by Madison and that's how we have some idea of what

the constitution was meant to do. But again, the big issue

in getting it passed and it was written for New York state

and it passed by a convention. The people didn't vote on

it. They elected people to vote on it. Typical indirect

democracy, and it passed by two votes. It was very close

because people did not trust a strong government. Thomas

Jefferson finally came over. When they agreed to have a

Bill of Rights he supported it. Patrick Henry never

supported it, but that document has lived with minimal

changes because it's a guideline to our government.

And of those 27 amendments, ten of them were right

away. They were the Bill of Rights, introduced at the first

congress in 1789. They actually introduced 18. Madison

wrote most of them. 12 were sent to the states. Ten passed

and seventeen none, the ten Bill of Rights. The eleventh

passed -- are we ready? 1992. It had been sitting -- since

1789. It had no time limit on it. When congress raised their

salary almost double, people in the United States got upset.

They found this sitting out there, the 11th amendment which

is now the 27th. It's listed as 27th. 1992 says that

congress can't raise their own salaries during their term of

office, but not during their own term. And that became --

so eleven of the amendments were right away. And so that

actually only leaves sixteen. Two cancelled each other out.

What were those two? Prohibition. So that gives us

fourteen amendments, three of which came from the Civil War

and the ending of slavery. We've only really had eleven

amendments that were on different subjects that were

relative; it's an amazing document. That provided for

majority rule and minority rights. I'll continue by going

into democracy, direct democracy, on Thursday.