Calif. election: Bilingual education

Tom Condit tomcondit at igc.apc.org
Fri Jun 5 20:44:26 PDT 1998


Today's Contra Costa Times has a story breaking down the vote on Prop 227 in Alameda and Contra Costa counties by city. The full text is available at www.hotcoco.com. First, a quote which sums it up:

The strongest vote for Prop. 227 came from the counties that have the

fewest number of immigrants, said Bruce Cain, associate director of the

Institute for Governmental Studies at UC-Berkeley. "That tells you that

it's more of a symbolic vote than it is a vote by people who are actually

affected by these programs."

Contra Costa County's overall vote mirrored that of the state, but the communities along the shore of San Francisco Bay voted heavily NO. (El Cerrito: 57%, Richmond: 60%, San Pablo: 57%.) Alameda County voted NO, with the vote swung by the overwhelming margins in the north shore cities: Albany, 73%; Berkeley, 77%; Emeryville, 65%; Oakland, 68%. Once south of the Oakland line, the votes were YES except in Union City, which has both a large latino population and a number of new asian immigrants.

The interesting part is where the big YES votes came from: the bastions of nouveau riche real estate developers and technology firm managers in Danville (68%), San Ramon (68%) and Pleasanton (66%). This is in general keeping with the incredible ignorance of these folks, even though most of them have advanced degrees. (Cf. the Gingrich House of Representatives, which has the greatest number of advanced degrees in the history of that body, and the highest level of ignorance about the real world.)

Contra Costa County is 77% white. Alameda County is 61% white.

The story cites a study by Harry Pachon, director of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at Claremont University of votes in 51 Southern California cities. "He found a direct correlation betweeen the numbers of Hispanic voters and opposition to the initiative."

What's clearest is that the more people knew about bilingual education, the less likely they were to vote for Proposition 227.

Tom Condit



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