The latest data from the University of California system has made the harm caused by Proposition 209, the 1997 state referendum banning affirmative action in admissions, more and more evident.

That supposedly color-blind approach is creating a racially stratified university system.

The figures gathered by university officials show that the number of Black, Hispanic, and Native American students who�ll enter the nine universities of the sprawling system this fall will be greater than it was three years ago--by a mere 100: 7,336 compared to 7,236 in 1997.

Some have declared this proof of the benevolence of Prop 209.

But the real news lies in where most of those students of color will now be heading.

Significantly fewer than in the past will be going to the top-tier state universities--the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at San Diego, and the University of California at Santa Barbara.

The percentage of Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans at these schools will decline to 17.6 percent of their students next fall, compared to 18.8 percent in 1997.

At Berkeley, for example, the number of Black, Hispanic, and Native American first-year students in 1997 totaled 1,778. Next fall, it will total 1,169.

At UCLA, 2,010 such students enrolled in the first-year class in 1997. This fall, 1,449 are expected.

Instead, more will be going to the system�s campuses considered less rigorous and less prestigious.

The total enrollment of Black, Hispanic and Native American students at those five campuses will jump to 6,550 this fall, from 4,822 in 1997.

This is what I call the pernicious dynamic of cascading.

That is, as Proposition 209 and other anti-affirmative action measures in other states close the more prestigious campuses of public universities once open to a relatively broad cohort of Black and Hispanic students, all but a relative few are being shunted to the second-tier schools.

Ward Connerly, the Black University of California regent who�s become the public face of opposition to affirmative action, thinks this narrowing of educational opportunities is proper.

He told the New York Times that "the numbers over all demonstrate that the absence of racial preferences, also known as affirmative action, does not mean that minority kids will not be educated at one of the best educational facilities in the country. They�ll just be redistributed to less competitive campuses."

But Bill Bagley, a regent of the university system who favored retaining affirmative action, more accurately described what this "redistribution" means.

"What you have is [that] your two flagship campuses [Berkeley and Los Angeles] will be sort of reverse ghettos, with Asians and whites, and a lack of color. That�s not good for those institutions."

Nor is it good that people of color, who had gained access in significant--although, in fact, still small--numbers to the best higher education had to offer, should now "gratefully" settle for second best.

That�s not good, especially when numerous studies have shown that large numbers of students of color who enter top-drawer institutions perform ably, graduate in higher numbers than those attending second-tier colleges--and as a group go on to match their fellow alumni in such things as career choices and leadership in their professional and communal activities.

No, that�s not good, especially when we know that the admission of students to the top-tier public universities in California who have not met the objective, test-score-based criteria has not ended.

Instead, it�s reverted to what "preferential treatment" was before the 1960s--when it was quiet and unofficial, and reserved exclusively for whites.

Ward Connerly and his ideological friends who say they oppose affirmative action for people of color because it�s unfair are only telling half the truth.

The half that is the truth is that they oppose affirmative action for people of color.

But not because it�s unfair.

They oppose it because affirmative action enables people of color to benefit from the same latitude colleges and universities have always used to admit those whose talent and ability weren�t accurately measured by the standardized tests.

In the decades before the 1960s that preferential treatment was reserved almost exclusively for white males.

That�s the kind of race-exclusive discretion the foes of an inclusive affirmative action find perfectly acceptable.

That�s why they kept silent when it came to light during the recent jousting for the Republican and Presidential nominations that both Governor George W. Bush and former Senator Bill Bradley were admitted to Yale and Princeton universities, respectively, in the early 1960s despite board scores 100 to 200 points below the norm for their class.

That news should have sparked a spirited discussion of the fact that whites have always benefited from affirmative action, and of the increased benefits its expansion to people of color has brought American society.

But, not surprisingly, Ward Connerly was as silent then as he is vocal now.

The reason: He thinks that for other people of color, second-best is good enough.