Even if race-based admissions to certain universities are “banned,” what prevents a university admissions administrator from seeing family surnames of applicants (i.e., “Cheng” is most likely Asian, “Hernandez” is most likely Hispanic) and subtly, silently, tacitly practicing racial affirmative action anyway?
In practice it means that race cannot be used as a factor when considering students for admission. Admissions committees generally use a form listing the selection criteria (if you’re interested, the selection criteria for the UC system is listed here, at pages 3-5). Each applicant is then given a score in each section, and the score tallied at the end. Where prop 209 came in was it prohibited the use of race as a selection criteria. Interestingly, note that selection criteria #14 is:
The UC’s General Counsel’s Office has advised admissions committees that they may “grant special consideration to students from, for example, particular high schools or neighborhoods based (at least in part) on the overall ethnic demographics of the school or neighborhood, as long as the University does not differentiate among students on the basis of their individual race/ethnicity.”
Now, do admissions officers – especially considering selection criteria #14 – use race as a silent factor? Likely or likely not, but admissions officers will have to justify this based on a factor that is arguably distinct from the race of the applicant (that is, the racial makeup of the applicant’s neighborhood).
It wouldn’t be very hard to have clerical staff (or a computer for that matter) replace the name on an application with a serial number before sending it to the admissions reviewers. I’ve seen this done with resumes.