ACRC Article

Affirmative action opponent Ward Connerly launched a ballot initiative Wednesday to prohibit most government agencies from compiling racial data, a proposal experts say could prove as emotionally charged as Propositions 187 and 209.

Connerly portrayed his initiative as a follow-up to Proposition 209, which five years ago eliminated affirmative action from public hiring and college admissions in California.

His latest measure, which he hopes will appear on the March 2002 ballot as a constitutional amendment, would remove any mention of race from government forms and prevent most state and local agencies from maintaining such statistics. A school district, for instance, would be unable to reflect the racial makeup of its institutions, while cities could not show the ethnic predominance of neighborhoods.

Critics said that would have devastating effects on government's ability to prevent discrimination and allocate services and representation to minorities.

But Connerly called personal identity a private matter, adding that his proposal would "tell all of us to stop being so obsessed about race."

Past elections in California have shown race to be an issue capable of sparking some of the state's most bitter disputes. Besides Proposition 209, there was Proposition 227, which in 1998 limited bilingual education, and Proposition 187, which in 1994 denied public services to undocumented immigrants. Voters approved all three.

"I think this could easily be another one of these issues -- just like 187, 209 or 227 -- that polarize whites and nonwhites at the ballot box," said Bruce Cain, director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

To reach the March 2002 ballot, Connerly needs to gather 670,816 signatures by Aug. 31, an effort that he expects will cost $1.5 million to $2 million. He said he believes the issue will be less divisive than previous measures that involved race.

"I don't think you will see the same level of emotion," he said. "We will have a lot of black Americans who have seen racial classifications used in very odious ways against them. Telling them that they couldn't marry whites. That their ancestors were three-fifths of citizens. ... So I think you're going to get a lot of support there."

But early indications show that civil rights and minority groups are gearing up for another complicated initiative fight.

"This is, in my opinion, much more dangerous than 187 or 209 because it wipes out civil rights enforcement in all arenas," said Victor Hwang, managing attorney for the Asian Law Caucus.

Hwang and others said government needs racial data to pinpoint demographics in a certain geographic area, reflect social trends and highlight where underrepresentation may be a problem.

For instance, since implementation of Proposition 209 in 1997, African American and Latino students in the University of California system have increased in numbers but decreased as percentages of the overall student body, said Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, a Latino research organization based in Claremont.

"Without (racial) data, we wouldn't be able to pick up on what kind of adverse effects policy initiatives have," he said.

But Connerly responded that such arguments rely on unfounded "statistical inferences" to determine whether racism occurs.

"We should not be able to get a bunch of data and say, based on this data, we know discrimination occurs," Connerly said. "Certain basketball teams are not necessarily diverse institutions. But one cannot draw an inference ... that there is discrimination occurring."

Lance Izumi, a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute who appeared with Connerly on Wednesday, said the conservative think tank has not taken a position on the initiative, but opposes government's use of racial data.

"In our studies, we have seen that racial classification, as the Supreme Court has said, is highly suspect and usually leads to bad public policy," he said.

Connerly acknowledged that some racial statistics are necessary, noting an exemption in the initiative for the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which investigates discrimination allegations. State-sponsored medical research and law enforcement agencies also would be exempted.

The latter exemption is aimed at allowing officers to describe individuals involved in crimes. It does not preclude any data collection effort to verify whether racial profiling by police occurs.

Though critics are chiefly concerned about the potential loss of civil rights protections, they also fear minorities will not receive adequate political representation and public services if the data are not collected.

"If you can't count (minorities), you can't see them," Pachon said. "The invisibility of data would mean invisibility in public policy."

Lawmakers now have at their disposal yearly demographics projections compiled by the state Department of Finance. But under the initiative, the department would no longer be able to sort racial statistics. That could result in an undercounting of minority populations, said department spokesman Sandy Harrison.

State and local policymakers would thus have to rely on federal census figures, which come out every 10 years and would be unaffected by the initiative.

The matter, Hwang said, boils down to a philosophical difference over how to overcome problems in society.

Connerly calls his proposal the "Racial Privacy Initiative" because it would protect a person from disclosing his identity to the government.

"That's something that sounds good, but then you kind of have to laugh," Hwang said. "For many of us, your race can't be private, it's something that's open on your face."

The Bee's Kevin Yamamura can be reached at (916) 326-5542 or kyamamura@sacbee.com.

Measure seeks to curb racial data: Connerly seeks a vote on his plan to sharply limit government collection of race statistics in the state.