Ending racial bean-counting

Fighting the good fight

[Reprinted from Issues & Views May 6, 2002]

Do you remember the predictions the supporters of racial preferences made in 1996, during the California Prop. 209 campaign? Here are just a few:

“Prop 209 will re-segregate California universities.”

“Women will be denied access to rape crisis centers if Prop. 209 passes.”

“Hispanics, blacks, won’t get jobs after 209.”

“Prop 209 will force women into ‘oldest profession’.”

In case you may have forgotten, Prop. 209--also known as the “California Civil Rights Initiative”--successfully ended the use of race-based “affirmative action” in public education, public contracting, and public employment. Of course, the Chicken-Littles were wrong about the effects of 209. None of the opponents’ predictions proved accurate, nor did they honestly believe they would.

So, don’t be surprised when you start to read and hear similar hysteria about another California statewide referendum--the Racial Privacy Initiative (RPI). This effort will get all government agencies in California out of the racial bean-counting business and prevent them from forcing increasingly multiracial citizens to check those Jim Crow-era race boxes on government forms and school applications.

Prepare for another onslaught of misrepresentation as the vote on RPI approaches, but be confident of success. If Prop 209 has taught all of us anything it is that our nation’s steady advancement to true colorblind government reflects the will of the people. They know our government--state as well as federal, for that matter--should not collect, distribute and utilize data about the "racial" and ethnic composition of our citizens. If these efforts are successful in California, the final chapter in our nation’s long and painful road to a color-blind society will have begun.

By removing the boxes [on forms], we make government colorblind and we encourage black and Latino kids to perform like everyone else. We let them know that their color and ethnicity really don’t matter, and that their accomplishments belong to them. If we can dispel this victim's mindset of “minorities,” we will do more to advance their self-image than anyone can imagine. With the debate about reparations and racial profiling, it is a constant battle to keep these kids from wallowing in the victims' mental ghetto.

-- Ward Connerly, excerpted from "Chicken Little Returns;" he is chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute.

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