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Former University of California Regent and longtime affirmative action opponent Ward Connerly has attracted some attention recently by saying he wants to review an agreement that UC San Diego reached with the campus’ Black Student Union on March 4.

UCSD has been hit by a string of bias incidents in recent weeks, and the UCSD administration and the BSU have been working to craft a response. Connerly has expressed concern that their agreement may violate provisions in the California state constitution that ban racial preferences in college admissions.

There’s nothing out of line about this. Proposition 209 is the law of the land, and it’s legitimate for a Prop 209 proponent to try to make sure it’s enforced. But in attempting to explain why UCSD has such a low African American enrollment rate, Connerly made a false and derogatory claim about black students.

Here’s what he said, in an interview with a Southern California paper: “There just aren’t enough black kids who are academically prepared to go to UC San Diego.”

This isn’t an opinion, it’s a factual claim. It’s checkable. It’s verifiable. And it’s wrong.

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