TEN years ago, Californians banned the state from choosing one race over another. The initiative they voted for, Proposition 209, was broadly (and blandly) phrased. But everybody knew what it meant. The practice of affirmative action, whereby some university applicants were favoured simply because of race or ethnicity, was outlawed, and a long attempt to salve the nation's racial wounds ended.

Washington state's voters went on to ban racial preferences in 1998, Michigan just last month. But what happened in the state that started the trend? Ten years ago, the abolition of affirmative action was widely expected to transform the racial mix of California's top universities and turn them into less diverse places. The first prediction turned out to be right; the second did not.

In 1995, the University of California's eight undergraduate colleges enrolled 945 black students. In 1998, the first year when the colour-blind regime was fully enforced, they enrolled 739—a drop of 22% in a period when the number of new students rose by more than a tenth. In the two most prestigious colleges, Berkeley and UCLA, the number of blacks fell by 47%.

The proportion of black students has never returned to the level of the mid-1990s. But the University of California's campuses have become more diverse anyway. Last year, 15% of newly admitted students were Hispanic and an astonishing 41% were Asian. Whites, who were supposed to benefit most from the demise of affirmative action, comprised 34% of the new intake—a smaller proportion than in 1995, and less than their share of California's high-school graduates.

Asians are packing California's lecture halls partly because they do so well in tests, and partly because they are less welcome elsewhere. Elite universities on the east coast continue to favour black and Hispanic candidates. They also favour the children of donors and alumni, most of whom are white. Last year, 47% of whites and 46% of blacks who were offered a place at the University of California took it up, compared with 65% of Asians.

California's universities are at least providing a route to the upper-middle class for an immigrant group that suffers discrimination in other parts of America. And there are other changes, hard to imagine without Proposition 209, of which they can also be proud.

The decade-ago row over how many fairly successful black 18-year-olds ought to be admitted to the state's top universities was always somewhat beside the point. The real scandal was, and is, the tiny numbers of successful black 18-year-olds. Thanks to strong unions and decades of underfunding, California may rank well above average in teachers' pay: but it is below average on staff-to-student ratios and spending per pupil. Blacks and Hispanics are particularly badly served.

As soon as it became clear that affirmative action would be done away with, the state's public universities began to concentrate their attentions on California's schools. They sent their trainee teachers to some of the most troubled ones, and, by entering into partnerships, nudged them to improve. They offered places to the top 4% of pupils in every school that offered the right courses, regardless of how bad it was, on the ground that those who prevail in bad environments have at least shown gumption.

Ward Connerly, a black businessman who backed Proposition 209, dislikes such outreach efforts, calling them a Trojan horse for racial preferences. But they are much less controversial than affirmative action. And because they are targeted at the least privileged pupils, rather than well-schooled ones who happen not to be white or Asian, they may prove a better way of solving the state's real inequities.