If voters approve ACA 5 in November, it will bring Affirmative Action back to the state of California.

Affirmative Action is an issue that has polarized some staunch African American opponents of Prop 209 and some avid Asian American supporters of it in California, driving a deep wedge that remains smack-dab at the heart of the relationship between those two advocacy camps.

Dr. Mei-ling Malone, an adjunct professor at California State University, Fullerton, who has an African American father and Taiwanese mother, supports ACA 5.

Malone, an instructor of African American Studies, told California Black Media that Asian Americans have an unfortunate history of taking unfriendly positions toward African Americans that dates all the way back to the late 1800s and early 1900s.

“Asian Americans have had a long history of being anti-Black as their strategy to protect themselves,” Malone said in a telephone interview with California Black Media.