If we ignore racial inequality, will it go away? Of course, says Ward Connerly, a UC Regent whose latest brainchild is Proposition 54, commonly known by the misleadingly innocuous nickname Racial Privacy Initiative. Someone in his position should have some sensible ideas on how to make California a better place for all races, right?
Sadly, no. Connerly has the right idea ó his ostensible goal is to create a color-blind society ó but, like many Americans, he has deeply confused ideas about the ways to achieve this goal. Proposition 54 would ban virtually all collection of racial data by state agencies, such as which racial groups are suffering from which diseases and attend which universities. Proposition 54 has been called “”pure racist American logic,”” “”bad medicine for California,”” and “”a proposition that promotes ignorance”” by various media outlets.
Perhaps the Black Commentator says it best: “”Only an insane citizenry would vote to deprive itself of information vital to the
workings of society, which is why Ward Connerly has every reason to believe he will win in October.”” Ouch.
Rather than nipping racial problems in the bud by collecting and analyzing racial data to make real strides in race relations, Connerly wants to simply pretend race doesn’t exist and, furthermore, entertain the illusion that everything is peachy among Californians of every stripe, color, and creed.
If we can’t study racial disparities, how can we ever hope of eliminating them? Despite our best efforts, the races are not equal in terms of housing, education, medical care and other basic measures. No one but a blatant racist would argue that these unfair, race-based disparities should be preserved, yet Proposition 54 would
preserve them as effectively as directly oppressive laws.
“”Disease is not colorblind. It affects people of different races and ethnicities in a multitude of ways, for a multitude of reasons. If we do not chronicle these differences, we cannot effectively fight disease,”” pleads a letter addressed to Connerly signed by over 40 public health care organizations opposed to Proposition 54. For a concrete example, take sickle cell anemia, a genetic disease of the blood, which, as we all learned in biology class, affects blacks a vast majority of the time.
The voting of Proposition 54 into law would eliminate any chance of effective (and necessarily racialized) study of this disease ó why in the world would we want to do that?
Furthermore, why would we want to impede justice in cases of racial discrimination? Without racial data, victims of racial discrimination would have no access to the data they need to prove their case in court, unlike victims of gender, age, or religious discrimination. The tracking and elimination of hate crimes would be made impossible, as law enforcement, the state attorney general and public agencies would have no data on the racial factors of various crimes. California’s Public School Accountability program would be effectively axed, as one of its cornerstones is the improvement of students of various races and ethnicities (especially since minorities continue to be systematically shut out of top-performing schools at all levels: another valuable piece of knowledge that would be stifled under Proposition 54). Sadly, those ill effects would be only the tip of the iceberg.
Proposition 54 is so vile that no one but the extremely bigoted or confused are daring to support it. Rather, “”virtually every health care, public official and civil rights organization has condemned the initiative as misguided, counterproductive, and dangerous,”” according to http:://WWW.MOVEON.ORG and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Cruz Bustamante, Peter Camejo, and Arianna Huffington all oppose it.
Besides the overt bigots, however, some are tending to favor Proposition 54 as a method of eliminating any possibility of affirmative action. That’s misguided, however, because Prop 54 would have such far-reaching and detrimental effects beyond
affirmative action, it simply wouldn’t be worth it. Eliminating any possibility of enacting affirmative action, no matter how repulsive you consider it to be, is simply not worth the stifling of important racial information at the expense of California’s health care, education, housing, and other vital services in regards to all racial groups. Let affirmative action be a separate issue to work out later, and view Proposition 54 as it is: an effort to keep California ignorant of the very knowledge we need to move toward a fair and equal society. Even to the typical white male who can’t understand the reasons behind affirmative action, Proposition 54 is detrimental: Some diseases, such as heart disease, have a disproportional
prevalence among whites and deserve to be studied. No one suffers in a society that’s fair for all races.
For someone who wants California to deny the existence of race as an immensely important social factor, Connerly is sure assiduous about describing his own background: “”one-quarter Black, three-eighths Irish, one-quarter French and one-eighth Choctaw.”” He rejects the label “”African-American,”” possibly because he has systematically and continually betrayed the black community ó after ending affirmative action at the University of California in 1995, an African-American magazine dubbed him “”the most hated Black man in America.”” Proposition 54 is simply his latest attack on racial equality in California.
Connerly’s backwards and destructive views on race, and his disturbing ties to conservative interests such as the Bradley Foundation (who supported his book “”Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences”” as well as Herrnstein and Murray’s “”The Bell Curve,”” which argues that blacks are genetically inferior to whites), make him appear woefully unqualified to be a California Regent. California has probably the most pressing racial issues of any state in the Union, and well-connected, highly influential man ó a man of mixed race, no less ó not only has grossly ignorant views of race, but drafts a proposal that, if passed, would cripple any hope of equality in this state.
