California Initiative Seeks to End Racial Classifications
By John Rossomando
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
December 31, 2001

(CNSNews.com) - One of America's most determined opponents of race-based preferences is sponsoring a measure he hopes will block attempts to subvert California's anti-affirmative action law known as Proposition 209.

More than five years after being approved by California voters and more than four years after being upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, Proposition 209 is still under attack, according to Ward Connerly, who fought for the law's passage in 1996 and is the author of the new measure called the Racial Privacy Initiative.

"Even with a ban on preferences, government agencies are still trying to use this artifice we call race as a means of rewarding some and punishing others," Connerly said.

According to Connerly, state and local institutions are collecting and using racial data to get around the law that was designed to eliminate race as a factor in the hiring of government personnel, the awarding of government contracts and the admission to public universities.

California's universities currently use racial data to "get more underrepresented minorities in certain institutions," in violation of Proposition 209, Connerly charges.

"The government classifying people is something that belongs in the dark ages," Connerly said. "It just makes no sense, and it's awfully costly."

The Racial Privacy Initiative, which Connerly hopes to get on the California ballot next November, would "get the government out of the business of asking people what their race is and collecting data on that basis," he said.

"It would be an express prohibition in the areas of public education, public contracting, and public employment, which are banned for purposes of preferential treatment anyway in California as a result of Proposition 209," Connerly said.

"My purpose really is to try to move the state of California, which really is a very, very racially and ethnically diverse state really back into a colorblind government mode," Connerly added.

The Racial Privacy Initiative does have loopholes. Police departments would still be able to describe suspects by race, hospitals would still be allowed to use racial data in medical research, and programs that collect racial data for the federal government still could do so. The California state legislature also could allow racial data to be collected with a two-thirds vote of both of its chambers and with a signature from the governor.

Connerly's opponents fear the new initiative could prevent the state and local governments in California from addressing racial problems.

"The initiative has nothing to do with protecting people's privacy, and everything to do with turning the clock back to a time when laws against discrimination did not even exist," ACLU-Northern California Racial Project Director Michelle Alexander said in a statement. "The so-called Racial Privacy Initiative would prohibit state agencies from collecting racial data that makes it possible to identify, track, monitor or prove discrimination.

"It would keep secret from the public basic information about race and ethnicity so that it would be nearly impossible to enforce anti-discrimination laws, or make policy reforms that are in the best interests of the communities they are designed to serve," Alexander added. "There has been no greater threat to progress in race relations, equal opportunity, or the health and safety of communities of color in the past thirty years than the threat posed by this initiative."

Supporters of the Racial Privacy Initiative counter that the government does not collect information about discrimination based on religion, sexual orientation, or political affiliation, and therefore, should not collect racial data either.

"That is a specious argument from my view because implicit in that is the government is engineering some sort of outcome [in] the competition for jobs, college seats, and public contracts," Connerly said.

"To me it doesn't follow that the government has to be involved in asking people, 'What is your race?' because that largely amounts to skin color, and certainly in many cases there are many Latinos who are just a white as someone who is not a Latino," he added.

Connerly's efforts to get the Racial Privacy Initiative on the ballot have also caused a stir inside the California Republican Party. GOP leaders have refused to endorse the initiative, fearing that its passage will hurt Republican candidates in minority communities.

California Republican Party Secretary Shannon Reeves even sent an email back in April warning party leaders that the initiative would, "hurt the party's image during this crucial period of rebuilding."

Supporters of the Racial Privacy Initiative say they will have to amass over one million signatures by April 12, 2002 in order to place the initiative on next November's ballot.