Proposition 54 in Calfornia
Right-wing attack on affirmative action
Following are excerpts from a Sept. 7 talk given by WWP
member LeiLani Dowell at a San Francisco meeting.
Ward Connerly, who brought California the
anti-affirmative-action Proposition 209 in 1996, is at it
again--with a new initiative called the "Classification by
Race, Ethnicity, or National Origin" Initiative, also known as
Proposition 54.
Prop 54, if passed, would make it illegal for the state of
California to "classify any individual by race, ethnicity,
color or national origin." "Classifying" is defined as "the act
of separating, sorting or organizing by race, ethnicity, color
or national origin including, but not limited to, inquiring,
profiling, or collecting such data on government forms."
Connerly would have us believe that we live in a color-blind
society, that a person's race has no impact on her or his socio
economic level, access to education, health care or housing,
not to mention general, everyday harassment and discrimination.
The philosophy of Connerly and his right-wing backers dismisses
the unequal playing field that people of color face in every
social sector, from discrimination in employment, health care
and housing to the disproportionate number of people of color
in prison and in the most dangerous and menial jobs in the
military.
Health organizations and professionals, public officials,
political organizations, religious groups, and bar associations
have all spoken out against the initiative.
While the initiative's language contains a few exemptions to
the information ban in certain sectors, many of them have been
condemned as being too narrow and vague, and some are simply
confusing and nonsensical. For instance, the initiative
contains an exemption that allows the police to "classify"
folks according to race (remember that the definition in the
initiative of "classifying" includes "profiling"). Yet
monitoring police profiling and police abuse in specific
communities--clearly necessary if one considers just the recent
attacks on the largely African-American community of Hunters
Point in the Bay Area--would be illegal.
In other words, it's okay to criminalize and profile people
by race, but ensuring social justice and opportunity isn't.
Just as insidious is the exemption that allows racial and
ethnic classification of "medical research subjects and
patients." While this sounds great, the initiative actually
bars what is considered by many in the medical industry to be
the cornerstone of public health administration: collecting
data for population-based surveys. On Aug. 29, a state superior
judge ruled that the proponents' summary statement to appear in
the voter's pamphlet had to be rewritten to accurately reflect
the far-reaching health implications of the measure.
And while the initiative calls for an exemption to the
Department of Fair Employ ment and Housing, the exemption is
set to expire in 10 years--apparently Connerly expects housing
discrimination to be eliminated by that time--and even that
exemption states that "DFEH shall not impute a race, color,
ethnicity or national origin to any individual." Regard less,
the exemption becomes something of a joke in its assumption
that housing is the only area that people of color are
discriminated in, and not in jobs, education, health care and
other sectors as well.
Connerly had originally given the proposition the misnomer
"Racial Privacy Initiative," but he was forced to change the
name on the ballot after the state attorney general refused it
as misleading. However, the official website of the initiative,
www.racialprivacy.org, still keeps the name. There can be found
the purported mission statement of the Initiative:
"Passage of RPI will do many things: 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."
The California Constitution "forbids state government from
discriminating against or granting preferential treatment to
any citizen based on race." Therefore, since government has no
reason to classify persons by race, why should it even ask us
for the data? Like religion, marital status or sexual
orientation, race should become a private matter that is no
business of government's. Think how refreshing it would be to
throw out the entire system of checking little boxes."
What a lofty statement. The proponents of the initiative are
careful not to mention the word "racism" in their statement.
While it's true that the 17th-century racial classification
system was used to exploit workers on the basis of race and
that the state continues to be a racist institution, the data
that are currently compiled by the state can be and is used in
the struggle for equal rights, a struggle that is necessarily
long and has not ceased. Yet they would have us believe that in
a capitalist system that was founded and continues to thrive on
racism, passage of a state initiative will simply make it all
disappear.
One might as well ignore the gains of the civil-rights and
other movements as well, as passage of RPI will "signal Amer
ica's first step" towards racial equality.
While the California Constitution may forbid race-based
discrimination, it is obvious to even the most casual observer
that discrimination still exists. And while the ruling
capitalist class may find it "refreshing" to not have to deal
with checks on racism, it is clear that without these checks,
long-fought-for affirmative-action rights as well as attempts
to address the health and welfare needs of specific communities
would be greatly inhibited.
Have the statistics compiled from the years of collecting
data on race ever proven anything but the necessity of more
checks on racism? Here's just a small sample of recent
headlines:
* An article in the Aug. 19 Guardian U.K. cites a report by
the U.S. Justice Department that says that Black men born in
the United States in 2001 will have a one in three chance of
going to prison during their lifetime if current trends
continue.
* An Aug. 15 Reuters article states that although breast
cancer is not as common in African American women compared with
other groups, it tends to be diagnosed at a later stage and is
therefore more deadly.
* An article in the San Francisco Chronicle of June 19 notes
that while the Latinos now represent the largest race or ethnic
group in California, one-third of Latino children in California
are poor.
* An article in the June 27 Asian Week newspaper notes that
in San Francisco, only .01 percent of Asian Pacific Americans
took an HIV test last year. The article cites a lack of
culturally competent and linguistically accessible health
education and risk reduction programs as part of the
problem.
On Sept. 3 the state's Fair Political Practices Commission
filed suit against Connerly and his two non-profit
organizations for a public disclosure of the organizations'
support roster for the initiative, as required by law. Perhaps
Connerly thinks support of his initiative will wane when voters
discover who his backers are. His organization, the American
Civil Rights Institute, receives regular major funding from the
ultra-conservative Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation of
Milwaukee as well as the Scaife Foundation.
According to MediaTransparency.org, the Lynde and Harry
Bradley Foundation is "the country's largest and most
influential right-wing foundation." The Scaife Foundation is
financed by the Mellon industrial, oil and banking fortune.
As President Bush requests billions of dollars more to
"cover ongoing military and intelligence operations in Iraq,
Afghanistan and elsewhere" and while California sinks further
and further into a budget crisis that translates directly into
cuts in education and social services, Proposition 54 would
make it easier for the capitalists, through a lack of
accountability, to deny services and continue their racist
program of military recruitment on campuses of color and police
brutality in the streets.
Connerly had hoped that after putting the initiative on the
highly contested Oct. 7 recall ballot, white conservatives
would be the only ones to come out to vote. However,
communities of color have been organizing against the
initiative, and it stands a very good chance of being defeated
in the election.
The San Francisco ANSWER Coalition plans on raising
awareness on Prop 54 at the upcoming Protest Against War and
Occupation on Sept. 28.
While we know that only the destruction of the capitalist
system through the struggle for socialism will lead to equal
rights for all, we recognize the value of fighting for the
gains that people of color have won throughout the years, and
the unifying of the movement through those struggles.
Reprinted from the Sept. 18, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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