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In the News and related articles:
Quoted in the Santa Cruz Sentinel:
Racial Privacy and the ‘Roots’ of Proposition 54
By Adam Abraham
SAN DIEGO (August 1, 2003) -- The Racial Privacy Initiative, touted by some as
a conservative or anti-affirmative action measure, is now Proposition 54. The
first portion of the Proposition’s mission statement, which is available on the
official RPI web site (www.racialprivacy.org), reads as follows:
“Passage of RPI will do many things: save our state budget over $10 million,
end government’s preferential treatment based on race, and junk a
17th-century racial classification system that has no place in 21st-century
America. But most importantly, RPI’s passage will signal America’s first step
towards a color-blind society.”
Here is my restatement of this paragraph.
“Passage of RPI (now Proposition 54) will do many things: end government’s
preferential treatment based on race, junk a 17th-century racial classification
system that is rapidly growing irrelevant in 21st-century America, and save our
state budget a minimum of more than $10 million each year. Most importantly,
Proposition 54’s passage will create America’s first real working model of a
government body that actually affords a greater measure of equal protection
to all of the citizens it is mandated to serve.”
Equal protection. Is that idea scary to some people?
In a recent Washington Times article, the state of California was referred to as
a pioneer in “outlawing affirmative action.” This is an over simplification that
galvanizes opponents to Proposition 54, and those who choose not read it for
themselves, because the measure is perceived to be regressive, rather than
progressive in the direction and spirit. “Outlawed” were preferential practices
by the state that had been based on race, which resulted in unfair
consequences to other citizens through no fault of their own.
After seeing how decades of reverse discrimination practices, however well
intended, were continuing to maintain racial rifts between its citizens after the
Civil Rights movement, the People of the state of California were the first to
take affirmative action, with the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996. In it, they
voted an amendment to the California Constitution, which enjoined the state
from “discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to any
individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin
in the operation of public employment, public education, or public
contracting.”
If the year had been 1963, the spirit expressed by Proposition 209 would have
been hailed as historic if not revolutionary, given the normal social practices
in both of the world’s “U.S.A.’s” in that day and time – the United States of
America that struggled to exorcize itself of the ghosts of slavery, Jim Crow,
and “separate but equal,” and the Union of South Africa, with its intolerant,
repressive system of apartheid. The racial social climate in both countries had
been exceedingly stormy and destructive, to put it mildly. But changes did
come for both.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 effectively extended the spirit of freedom that was
first articulated on July 4, 1776 in the body of the Declaration of Independence:
“WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these
Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from
the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government
becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to
abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such
Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem
most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Proposition 209 was, in actuality, a recommitment to, and expansion of these
principles. In Proposition 54, said recommitment is once again affirmed.
The Washington Times article further mentions Ward Connerly, chief backer of
Proposition 54, whose support was also instrumental in the passage of
Proposition 209, a fact that has garnered him disdain and sometimes scorn by
some African-Americans. He is “credited” by some with taking away a
hard-earned advantage in race-based preferential treatment for American
black students, primarily in admissions to the University of California. With
scores on academic achievement tests charting consistently and chronically
well below that of white and Asian applicants, a race-based “waiver” had
taken on the properties of a real political hot potato.
As a regent of the University of California, Mr. Connerly acknowledged black
scholastic under-achievement as a serious problem, but did not agree that
lowering academic standards for certain groups of students – Hispanics had
joined them in the academic cellar – as a viable, beneficial, or particularly fair
solution. In passing Proposition 209, California voters agreed by a fifty-four to
forty-six percent margin.
With equal determination, Mr. Connerly is pushing Proposition 54 because, the
Washington Times writer asserts, “he believes the state should move from
race consciousness to race blindness, and that removing the race classifying
checkboxes would be an effective way to begin.” As unpopular as this may
sound to some readers, Mr. Connerly courageously makes a point that is good
for us all, opponents alike.
With sixty-three boxes denoting racial and ethnic classifications on the U.S.
Census, we have to ask ourselves, when does the law of diminishing returns
begin to kick in? Or perhaps, when do we acknowledge that the social
dividends from this strategy stopped coming long ago? This is important
because if 63 “makes sense” today, then why not 144 tomorrow?
If we don’t mandate that an end to race-based checkboxes be made, then
legislators, bureaucrats, and attorneys never will. Furthermore, if we continue
to legitimize this form of “political exceptionalism,” a new and unintended
level of social stratification will be opened, as it will become necessary to
referee various racial and ethnic groups by their rankings. In other words,
what happens when someone from checkbox Group 23 has a grievance with
someone from checkbox Group 44, or Group 1? Is one group – officially or
unofficially – going to be considered “more equal” than another?
Maintaining check boxes will not mean that we will be treated equally, or
even “more equally,” by our government or by each other. It simply means
that there will be more self-righteous indignation to deal with, more statistical
data to look at in support of it, a larger (and more costly) bureaucracy to
administer it, more litigation to endure, more arguments about who is “right”
(and “wrong”), more cost to American taxpayers, and more time before justice
is actually served, whether it is deemed “fair,” or not. It also means that the
idea of racial inequality gets more entrenched. Is this what we want?
At some point when we weren’t looking, it appears that our social concept of
equality was either redefined, or replaced with the word privilege.
Maintaining checkboxes that foster more attention, and by inference better, or
privileged (instead of equal) service to some citizens than it does to others
based on their race or ethnicity, is not in the spirit of democracy, nor does it
facilitate the practice of equal citizenship. Perhaps it’s time to reexamine what
the word “equality” really means, and to see Proposition 54 in a different
light. Instead of being considered “anti affirmative action,” we might see it as
“pro equality.” We must start somewhere. It might as well be here and now.
Copyright © 2003 Adam Abraham All rights reserved
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