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News Articles |
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John Derbyshire
Mind Your Own Business Privacy fight in California. June 25, 2002 8:45 a.m. http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.asp?ref=/derbyshire/derbyshire062502.asp As has often been said, the most interesting arguments in our public life today are not those between Left and Right, but those within the Right. The political Left has had no new ideas since 1968.* Their old ideas have "won" in the sense that they dominate the media, universities, the legal profession, and the public sector, but the price of victory has been the stultification of leftist thought, and a decay of the critical faculties. Nobody on the Left has anything interesting to say. Our best debates now are all within the political Right. One that has currently got my attention concerns Ward Connerly's "Racial Privacy Initiative."
"Breaking the Chains!!" October/November 2001 http://www.multiracial.com/abolitionist/word/landrith3.html As editor and publisher of The Multiracial Activist and The Abolitionist Examiner, I would like to take this time to express my commitment to ending our government's obsession with classifying Americans by "race." OUTSIDE THE BOX When America's best symphony orchestras evaluate potential musicians, the candidates audition "blind"; they play their instruments behind a screen so the auditioning committee does not know the musicians' race, sex or appearance but only hears the quality of their performance. Auditions are thus an honest meritocracy, and better symphonies are the result.
Debbie Schlussel Is Tiger Woods Black? EDITORIAL Ward Connerly, University of California Regent and businessman, was his usual eloquent self at a lunch meeting in Los Angeles Wednesday, where he offered an update on the progress of his Racial Privacy Initiative. But the initiative, which offers a bold way to move beyond the sterility of racial and ethnic politics, might be in trouble if it doesn't get some volunteer help in the next week or so. The initiative is simplicity itself. COMMENTARY, March 29, 2002 Sometimes you are accused of being what you really are. Recently -- and dismissively -- I have been accused of being "colorblind" on matters of racial policy. This is a charge of naivete. To want public policy that is blind to the race and ethnicity of citizens is seen by many as a kind of social libertarianism, too preciously principled for reality. How can we know the reality of race in America if, out of a perfectionistic idealism, we refuse to see it?
Kudos California! I applaud the bold anti-discrimination actions underway in California. Thousands of Californians are demonstrating their belief in our basic rights by signing petitions to place the Racial Privacy Initiative (RPI) on the November ballot.
George Will A good idea in California may help America discard one of the worst ideas it ever had It is probably the most pernicious idea ever to gain general acceptance in America. No idea has done more, and more lasting, damage than the “one drop” rule, according to which if you have any admixture of black ancestry, you are black, period. This idea imparted an artificial clarity to the idea of race, and became the basis of the laws, conventions and etiquette of slavery, then of segregation and subsequently of today’s identity politics, in which one’s civic identity is a function of one’s race (or ethnicity, or gender, or sexual preference).
Thomas Sowell Can you think of any reason why the past or present sufferings of blacks would justify letting a white student get admitted to an elite public high school in San Francisco over a Chinese American student with higher qualifications?
Racial profiling not 'wired' into
brain Racial stereotyping may seem to be such a prevalent habit of the human species as to suggest that the disease of discrimination is incurable. But a new study released today finds reason to be more optimistic. December 7, 2001
Here's a radical thought: If we stop
obsessing on race, people may actually become colorblind
www.jewishworldreview.com
Published on October 30, 2001, Daily News
of Los Angeles Sunil Dutta is an officer in the Los Angeles Police Department's Valley Traffic Division We have attached two articles (see full story) which discusses racial data collection in Los Angeles. While this practice would be exempted from RPI because it is under a consent decree, it still wouldn't pass the giggle test. Can you imagine police officers supposedly "trained" to guess the racial identity of drivers and pedestrians who are stopped? This brings to mind the quote we published in our last Egalitarian, by Raquelle de la Rocha, president of the L.A. Board of Police Commissioners: "How are officers going to guess what background people like me come from? With all the racially mixed people in L.A., and Latinos coming in all shades, the data will be garbage in, garbage out." Judging from Police Chief Bernard Parks' comments in the article, it looks like he has similar doubts. For a thought-provoking counterpoint, we've also attached a op-ed by L.A. police officer Sunil Dutta. Posted in the Sacramento Bee August 22, 2000 Race is only skin deep, DNA scientists believe By Natalie AngierNew York Times
Scientists have
long suspected that the racial categories recognized by society are not
reflected on the genetic level. But the more closely researchers examine the
human genome – the complement of genetic material encased in the heart of
almost every cell of the body – the more most of them are convinced that the
standard labels used to distinguish people by “race” have little or no
biological meaning.
"Irrelevance of Race" Sunday, July 8, 2001 ©2001 San Francisco Chronicle By Ward Connerly Opposition by Eva Paterson Intended to discover patterns of de facto discrimination, racial data are collected by the state in what critics consider a now-needless exception to the ideal of a color-blind society. With a Racial Privacy Initiative proposed for the California ballot next year, Insight asked its chief sponsor, Ward Connerly, to argue its merits and Eva Paterson, a San Francisco civil rights lawyer, to explain her opposition. March 7, 2001 The Sacramento Bee No more race-box classification By Ward Connerly
With the arrival and departure of Y2K, many observers wonder aloud whether “the color line” will continue to plague America throughout the 21st century. I am one of those worriers. Unlike most, however, I believe the greatest impediment to fulfilling our nation’s guarantee of equal justice under law lies not with enduring racism, but with our government’s continued reliance on racial classifications.
Don’t Box Me In: An end to racial checkoffs By Ward Connerly April 16, 2001
A few weeks ago, I
was having dinner with a group of supporters following a lecture. One of
those in attendance was a delightful woman who applauded my efforts to achieve
a colorblind government. She strongly urged me to stay the course, promised
financial support for my organization---- the American Civil Rights
Institute—and proclaimed that what we are doing is best for the nation.
Measure seeks to curb racial data: Connerly seeks a vote on his plan to sharply limit government collection of race statistics in the state.By Kevin Yamamura 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. An End to Counting by Race? ByTamar Jacoby THE DECENNIAL census required by the U.S. Constitution has always been entangled with questions of race. The constitutional provision that, until passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, counted a black man as only three-fifths of a person raised problems from the beginning. But race remained a part of the government’s population tally even after the Civil War. Until 1970, the Census Bureau decided people’s race for them: the enumerator who knocked on the door determined it, sometimes by inquiring, sometimes with a quick look. Since then, respondents have been allowed to answer the question for themselves, picking from an ever-expanding list of racial, ethnic, and national possibilities. Still, for all these changes, the census continued to conform in one key respect to most people’s understanding of what race meant. As the instructions on the form emphasized, “Fill ONE circle for the race that the person considers himself/herself to be.” Race was an exclusive category—if you were one thing, you were necessarily not something else, just as you were either male or female. |
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