The attempt to stop the use of race in the US in hated byt the left. Too bad. Remember the "Content of the character" line?
California Battles Over Racial Identification
Oct. 7 Ballot Includes Proposition 54, Controversial Bid for 'Color-Blind' Society
By Evelyn Nieves
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 13, 2003; Page A04
SAN FRANCISCO -- The other big issue on the California gubernatorial recall ballot may not be garnering page one headlines or cable news bites. But it is generating a fierce, even bitter, debate among its friends and many foes about its potentially far-reaching consequences.
Proposition 54, nicknamed the "Racial Privacy Initiative" by sponsors and "the Information Ban" by opponents, would create a constitutional amendment barring most governmental agencies in California from gathering information on a person's race, ethnicity or national origin. Tacked onto the Oct. 7 recall ballot, the initiative, if passed, would possibly remove race and ethnicity from birth and death certificates; school and university records; law enforcement records that keep track of hate crimes and racial profiling; and many other data sources.
Ward Connerly, its chief sponsor, calls Proposition 54 a first step toward moving closer to a "color-blind" society. Connerly, the University of California regent who sponsored the 1996 ballot initiative that banned affirmative action in public hiring and university admissions, says that classification by race or ethnicity is a vestige of the slave era that has no place in 21st century society, especially when so many people do not fit neatly into little census boxes.
But opponents of Proposition 54 say that while achieving a color-blind society is everyone's goal, the ideal will not be reached faster simply by removing racial data from public records. Because racial discrimination still exists in profound ways, they say, eliminating the means by which it is monitored hinders rather than helps progress. And beyond the effect on minorities, critics of the initiative say, eliminating race from public records eliminates a major resource for identifying disease clusters and patterns for public health researchers.
Although Proposition 54 has been overshadowed by Democratic Gov. Gray Davis's potential recall, it has galvanized opposition in recent weeks from a broad spectrum of civil rights, medical, public health, law enforcement and environmental organizations (who say racial data are needed to track environmental racism). Lt. Gov. Cruz M. Bustamante (D), the front-runner on the recall ballot, has boosted the opposition's chances by pledging to donate $3.8 million in controversial contributions he received from Indian tribes and unions to a committee to defeat Proposition 54. His campaign plans a series of television ads against the initiative, with Bustamante in the starring role.
Recently, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Republican front-runner, also came out against Proposition 54, leaving state Sen. Tom McClintock, a conservative Republican, as the only major candidate in the recall supporting it.
Public support for the initiative (officially called the Classification by Race, Ethnicity, Color or National Origin Initiative) is dropping as likely voters become more aware of it, according to the latest Field Poll. The poll shows support dropping to 40 percent, from 50 percent in July and 46 percent in August. During the same period, awareness of the initiative has increased to 54 percent, from 41 percent in August and 25 percent in July.
This is a bad sign for Proposition 54 supporters, said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll. "The momentum is with the opposition," he said. He added that this could benefit the no vote on the recall ballot, because the strongest opponents of the initiative are also the strongest opponents of removing Davis.
Leading opponents say the initiative is poorly written and thought out, with unintended consequences.
"Mr. Connerly would have us believe that if you get rid of the references to race and ethnicity, then you get rid of the problems," said Maria Blanco, national senior counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. "We feel precisely the opposite is true. The information allows us to recognize and analyze problems. There is a reason why the entire health community is against this initiative, including groups that normally don't take stands on ballot questions."
Underscoring the significance of the campaign to civil rights organizations working for racial equality in the last few weeks, some of the most prominent African American leaders -- Jesse L. Jackson, Al Sharpton, Kweisi Mfume, president of the NAACP, and Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP's board of directors -- have come to California to denounce the initiative and encourage voter registration and information campaigns to defeat it.
The initiative's most high profile supporters in the state include John Moores, owner of the San Diego Padres, and the state Republican Party.
"Basically, we feel that everybody is equal and that we don't need to know a person's race or ethnicity," said Pam Corradi, president of the California Congress of Republicans, which endorsed the referendum last April. She added: "Our philosophy is individual rights, and the less government intrusion, the better."
Connerly, who has bristled at being labeled "African American" because of the color of his skin, listing his ancestry as multiethnic and multiracial, is usually preoccupied with fighting race-based affirmative action. After the Supreme Court's recent decision to allow the limited use of race in university admissions, he began organizing a referendum that would ban the use of race as a factor in admissions in Michigan, where the Supreme Court case began.
For Proposition 54, Connerly's organization, the American Civil Rights Coalition in Sacramento, began circulating petitions in 2001, and qualified in July 2002 with more than a million signatures for the next statewide ballot. That would have been the March presidential primary had not the recall election caught both sides of Proposition 54 off guard.
With little in the way of an organized campaign, Connerly has been debating opponents throughout the state. He concedes that in the last few weeks, momentum has shifted toward critics. "I'm amazed at how organizations with a vested interest in keeping the status quo have been on message," he said, "repeating distorted, misleading information about the initiative that the media repeats as though it were fact."
Some of the most significant opposition has come from medical and public health experts. Public health researchers object to the referendum's ban on information from vital statistics, which they say they depend on to understand why certain groups -- not just minorities -- suffer more from certain illnesses or how diseases spread, or why some people tend to die from diseases that others survive.
The initiative contains an exemption from the ban on collecting data for medical research subjects or patients (as well as for police when identifying suspects and prisons when assigning prisoners, and where federal law requires the information). Connerly says the initiative would do nothing to stop doctors from gathering information useful to fight disease or conduct research, and accuses his critics of distorting the content of the initiative as a "scare tactic."
"They've repeated their claim so often that fighting back is like trying to prove a negative," Connerly said, "like 'How long have you been beating your wife?' "
The dispute over the medical exemption has ended up in court. Proposition 54 supporters sued the state and succeeded last month in having the ballot summary changed to add an exemption for "all medical and health-care related matter" to the initiative's description. Then, last week, a judge, prompted by a suit filed by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, ordered that the ballot summary be changed so that the exemption reflects the exact wording on the initiative, "for medical research subjects and patients."
The initiative's exemption, public health experts say, is so narrow as to be of no use. Scores of medical and public health organizations oppose Proposition 54, saying it could prove dangerous. Carmen R. Nevarez, a vice president at the Berkeley-based Public Health Institute in Oakland, calls the initiative "poorly written and thought out."
"For the purposes of public health, which gathers its information from statistics in public records -- birth and death certificates -- the initiative is very troubling," she said. "The statistics we look at on race and ethnicity not only help minorities, they help public health professionals study information that benefits the entire population. If there is a disease outbreak in one population, we can locate, then treat and guard the public from an epidemic."
Diane Schachterle, coordinator the Proposition 54 campaign, said that while the medical exemption issue could be settled in court or by the legislature, the goal of the initiative should not suffer because of differences in interpretation. "How will we ever become a color-blind society," she asked, "if our entire focus is race? How can we ever get past it?"
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