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Proposition 209: A Decade LaterMany Americans, including Californians, recognize and embrace the value of the rich cultural and racial-ethnic diversity we have here in the United States. Unfortunately, the evidence is all around us that discrimination in housing, education, healthcare and employment remains a reality of life in America as well. Research shows that racial-ethnic groups still need legal protections against discrimination. For example, when Black, White and Latino job applicants with identical qualifications applied for the same job as part of an experiment to test whether or not race remained a barrier to employment, Whites had a much higher success rate than the Blacks and Latinos who were more likely to be rejected out of hand (Feagin and Sikes, 1994). In 2006, Asians Asians occupied 7.3 percent of the professional work force, but only 2.8 percent of management positions. "In the wake of Prop. 209, black students are disappearing from University of California campuses. Two decades ago, they accounted for 10% of the student population at UCLA. In 2006, according to political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson, black students made up barely 2% of the more than 4,000 freshmen at UCLA. That's fewer than 100 students." Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, former University of California Regent Ward Connerly and current chairman of the Sacramento, California –based American Civil Rights Initiative believes that America is a “colorblind society.” The people who finance his anti-Affirmative Action exploits couldn’t agree more. Together, they pushed Proposition 209 before California voters in 1996. Proposition 209, or the California Civil Rights Initiative Campaign, was a ballot proposition that amended the California state constitution to eliminate affirmative action in hiring, contracting and public education. Proposition 209 was voted into law on 5 November 1996, with 54% of the vote. In 2006, Connerly was the public face for a group that sponsored a similar ballot imitative, Proposal 2, in Michigan. That initiative was endorsed by the Klu Klux Klan. Upon learning about the Klan endorsement, Connerly, “Thank[ed] them for finally reaching the point where logic and reason are being applied instead of hate.” ( Paddock, Los Angeles Times, November 26, 2006, Affirmative action era is over, longtime foe says.”) Michigan voters passed Proposal 2 with 58% of the vote. Currently, Ward Connerly’s highly financed anti-Affirmative Action political machine is conducting exploratory research for putting similar initiatives on the ballot of at least nine other states, including Missouri, South Dakota, Arizona and Oregon in 2008. A decade after the passage of Prop 209, social justice advocates are faced with the devastating fact that despite glaring evidence that Prop 209 has decimated African American and Latino contracting, employment and public education in California, voters appear unwilling to reverse Prop 209 if asked to do so in the 2008 election. Furthermore, voters in other states are poised to pass similar measures. Voter willingness to pass anti-affirmative action measures while insisting they support equal opportunity can no longer be explained away with facile arguments that voters didn’t understand what they were voting for in passing Prop 209. Michigan voters were well-educated about the realities of Proposal 2 and indicated they would be voting against that measure. Yet, in the privacy of the voting booth, they voted for Proposal 2. This suggests that as proponents of 209 and similar ballot initiatives work to explain away glaring evidence that racial discrimination has returned with a vengeance in the post-209 environment, opponents cannot rely on voter statements about support for affirmative action polices. Many observers correctly note that one of the challenges confronting opponents of Prop 209 is that the debates on these measures are often framed in terms of the rights of Blacks and Whites. In reality, all racial-ethnic groups, including Whites, have benefited from affirmative action. Elsewhere, I cite research that shows how “white men from poor and working class backgrounds have also benefited from the employment policies and practices that grew out of affirmative action requirements and broader civil rights legislation--e.g., the standardization of recruitment and selection procedures and other personnel practices.” The Civil Rights Movement helped Asians fight against bias. Since all groups benefited, the debates should be couched in terms of benefits and setbacks for all groups, while also illuminating the disparate impact that these measures have on Blacks, Latinos and some segments of the Asian population. As I have written elsewhere, “Affirmative action at its best is merit-based, because it opens the opportunity structure to a broader range of American citizens, ameliorates the weak-will of powerholders, and provides avenues to thoughtful planning for inclusion--as opposed to knee-jerk reactions to crisis.” All groups ultimately lose many important civil rights when anti-affirmative action measures succeed. Rather than ignore racial differences in access to education, employment and contracting, progressive communities must intensify our struggles against the retrograde political thought and action that Prop 209 measures promote.
Sources Cited.
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