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After Prop. 209

Initiative to ban state from gathering race information, next on Connerly’s agenda

Ward Connerly. File photo.

By Associated Press

Backers of the 1996 initiative that ended most state affirmative action programs in contracting, employment and education are working on a related initiative for the March 2002 ballot.

Ward Connerly’s American Civil Rights Coalition has submitted an initiative to the Attorney General’s Office that would keep the state from collecting race information in all but a few cases.

Coalition spokesman Kevin Nguyen said the initiative would rid forms such as those for college admissions and state employment of “silly little boxes” asking for the applicant’s race.

“On most government forms, information is collected for the simple reason of government curiosity. At the University of California, the question is still on application forms even with the ban on race-based admissions,” Nguyen said.

School districts that collect the information to gauge the progress of minority students could continue to collect the information under several exemptions in the initiative, Nguyen said. The Legislature would be allowed to permit the collection if it served some important state purpose.

The initiative should be in circulation by April, he said. Supporters of the initiative must get about 420,000 signatures from registered voters to get the proposition on the ballot.

Supporters say it is not the role of the state to collect race-based information. Nguyen said the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was made easier by government records that showed where Japanese people lived.

But opponents of Proposition 209 say the new initiative would cause more problems.

“It is a racist initiative that is designed to prevent the tracking and monitoring of discrimination,” said Michelle Alexander, director of the Racial Justice Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s intended to gut the capacity of the Department of Justice and the Attorney General’s Office, as well as civil rights organizations, to enforce existing civil rights laws.”

“It’s just going to hinder the state from any attempt to address racial inequality,” said Michael Chavez of Californians for Justice, a Long Beach-based group working on inequality in schools.

He said the initiative would make it harder to collect information to determine if a problem exists, such as in recent accusations of racial profiling of blacks and Latinos by police.