CA is about to embark on an experiment in which the government is forbidden by law to collect racial information about the citizens. Ward Connerly is the guy behind this-- the same person who got prop 209 (forbidding the CA government from using race as a factor in school admissions and other government activities) passed.
And with the recall election now scheduled for the fall of ’03, this initiative will be on the ballot a lot earlier. While not a shoe-in, it looks likely to pass:
I’m not a big fan of most CA initiatives and this one is a bit heavy handed if you read all the details. But I think on balance it’s an appropriate measure taken in a climate where the government seems to be going overboard in focusing on the race of the citizens. The initiative is careful to exclude medical research. The one section in the initiative that I’ve got mixed feelings about is the section which effectively disallows the state from investigating police racial profiling:
Otherwise, I like it and will almost certainly vote for it. What do you think? I’m surprised how little press this had gotten since it’ll be a significant paradigm shift in the way the CA government operates. The rest of the country could easily follow suit.
Thanks for pointing this out. My medical-researcher wife has been strongly opposed because we didn’t know about this exclusion.
It sounds like a pretty good idea. It’s like the completion of Prop 209. Preventing the state from keeping racial records helps prevent them from evading Prop 209 and continuing to practice racial preferences.
OTOH this proposition makes it harder to prove a case if some agency is discriminating against minorities. One hopes it won’t lead to a reinstatement of racial discrimination in state hiring.
I wonder how wide the medical exception will prove to be. Obviously it would apply to research in diseases, medicines, treatments, etc. It would probably also apply to any sort of psychological research. From there, it’s a small step to sociological research.
I expect to see some lawsuits as varous organizations fight to maintain their data bases. If data base has both medical and non-medical uses, then presumably it can be maintained.
"But I think on balance it’s an appropriate measure taken in a climate where the government seems to be going overboard in focusing on the race of the citizens. "
What do you mean by this?
I don’t see how prohibiting the government from collecting data in connection is a good thing. If black students are doing more poorly than white students, isn’t that a good thing to do? It seems to me, as december alludes to, this is motivated by an attitude of mistrust of government: “we don’t trust you to handle racial data responsibly”. If people really have that little trust in their government, I don’t think this initiative will fix that.
I assume you meant “isn’t that a good thing to know?”
That’s an interesting question. Could we really make practical use of such knowledge? Don’t forget that students are individuals. Some black students are better than some white students.
Also, students can be evaluated individually. If we want to set a special program for students who need help, we can identify the needy students by their actual level of skills. We don’t need to use race as a proxy.
Actually, this initiative allows for racial data to be collected if there is an overriding interest. Read the whole initiative before trashiing it. The legislature, by a supermajority vote, can deal with issues such as the one Ryan brings up. It raises the threshold for racializing an issue, but it still allows the gov’t to jump in under certain circumstances. Note that the state can still collect socioeconomic information about the citizenry.
I can think of one place where California has made practical use of such knowledge.
They discovered young, bright Latinas- often the valedictorians of their high schools- were dropping out of the prestigious UC System and entering less prestigious colleges closer to home. They did some investigation and discovered that these women often have family obligations that require them to commute from school on the weekend to their homes. This gets too stressful and they drop out or transfer to a less prestigious school so that they can be with their families.
Because they were able to tell how aspect of culture- often defined upon racial lines- affected a specific population, they were able to take steps towards solving that problem (building UC Merced). This may not have happened if Latina dropouts were lumped in with everyone else.
Well, it’s probably because gender is a genuine difference that can actually be quantified in a meaningful way. Race, on the other hand, is a totally meaningless division that is becoming less and less relevent. Within a couple of hundred years, we’ll all be a pleasant shade of brown, but there will still be men and women.
We aren’t all a pleasant shade of brown now. This measure would be appropriate when this happens, but it seems premature to do now when race and racism are still very much real.
Wouldn’t this law thwart the state and private parties’ ability to comply with federal anti-discrimination laws? The federal funding exception would not be sufficient, since many of these laws stem from the 14th Amendment, not from the Congressional tax and spend power.
Are you saying that I’m trashing it? Actually, you need to read it again, because it doesn’t say what you think it says. This exception does not apply to the case I brought up. And anyway, what kind of argument is this? We shouldn’t be dismissing problems with an amendment on the basis that “Hey, it’s reversible”.
Seems to me that a more likely scenario would be that the interested parties would get the federal government to require an exception. Which is another problem; this would move more power to the federal government.
chula:
There are specific exceptions for federal law and the US Constitution.
Maybe race shouldn’t matter, but it does. This amendments seems like an exercise in wishful thinking: “Maybe if we pretend race doesn’t exist, racism will go away”.
I think it’s a bit less innocent than that. The real sentiment is more along the lines of “If we pretend race doesn’t exist, we won’t have to acknowledge and work against it”.
No, there aren’t specific exceptions, only a severability clause, but it hardly matters since it’s a given that it can’t be enforced if it violates the U.S. Constitution. I just don’t see how anyone could prove a racial discrimination claim if there are no statistics on race. I doubt this amendment would directly violate the US Constitution, but it would undermine attempts to comply with federal obligations.
Chula: Nothing in the law prohibits private entities from gathering statistics on race. If you were using statistics to back up your lawsuit against a corporation, how would gov’t statistics help you? You’d still need data on that specific company, and that would be better obtained from the private sector. Companiies interested in promoting Affirmative Action would still look at their hiring across racial and/or ethnic lines.
Actually, the sentiment I was aiming at was more like, “The first step towards having a truely color-blind society is to act in a manner that is truely color-blind.”
