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The Racial Privacy Initiative is largely the brainchild of Ward Connelly, the man best known for passing Proposition 209, which banned the use of affirmative action in California state universities. File photo.
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Controversy Over Racial Privacy Initiative
By Avy Mallik
Special to AsianWeek
In the latest dispute over the Racial Privacy Initiative, a measure that has drawn sharp criticism from Asian Pacific American organizations, the bill has failed to qualify for the November 2002 election. Proposed by the American Civil Rights Coalition, the bill is now slated to appear on the March 2004 elections.
The initiative, if passed, would make the collection of racial and ethnic data by the state government unlawful. City and county governments, state universities, public school districts and community colleges would also be banned from collecting or using this form of data. The Racial Privacy Initiative is largely the brainchild of Ward Connelly, the man best known for passing Proposition 209, which banned the use of affirmative action in California state universities.
Kevin Nguyen, the executive director of the American Civil Rights Coalition, is anxious to dispel the presumption that most communities are against the bill: “Essentially every single ethnic and racial group supports the bill. According to a poll taken just two months ago, 50 percent of white Americans are for this bill, while 30 percent are against it. This is the same statistic for Latino Americans. Forty-two percent of African Americans are for this bill, whilst 41 percent are against it.”
For APAs, however, only 35 percent support the measure, and 42 percent are against it. Nguyen stressed that this poll was taken by an independent organization. Nguyen, who is Filipino American, justified the poll, saying, “California, more than any other state, is incredibly diverse and complex… [Californians] are much too complex to classify into categories. It is time to realize that race, like religion and sexual orientation, is a private matter.”
Nguyen, who is the chief proponent of the bill, believes that ethnic data is misleading. “[Racial data] corrupts public policy. We pretend it has scientific value, but it doesn’t reveal much at all.” Nguyen added that the collection of racial data is costly, has no reliability and is a basis for the government to keep potentially discriminatory information on its citizens.
All the groups opposed to this initiative decry that, if passed, the repercussions to minority groups would be disastrous. Vivek Malhotra, an attorney with Chinese for Affirmative Action, said, “The initiative seeks to blind the state from recognizing racism. After Sept. 11, hate crimes towards South Asians and Arab Americans have spiraled upwards tremendously. If the data was eliminated, we would have only anecdotes to tell us who needs help.”
Another major concern about the Racial Privacy Initiative is its detrimental effect towards the health of minorities. While the measure exempts the ban on all medical studies, many contend that the exemption is far too limiting, especially since most information concerning illnesses comes from public information surveys, not medical studies.
“We know that Vietnamese women have a faster rate of cervical cancer than any other ethnicity,” explained Jan Lui, a spokesman for the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum. “We also know that Chinese American women have a very high rate of breast cancer. We need to know how each ethnicity is affected by different diseases.
To limit our knowledge of the problem will not help us solve it,” continued Lui.
According to Malhotra, if the initiative passes, the employment demography would change substantially: “If left unchecked, businesses could engage in unlawful hiring and firing practices. Companies would be free to promote people according to their race.” Malhotra believes that the Racial Privacy Initiative could act as a double-edged sword: “Not only would the measure hurt minority groups, but we would be unable to assess how badly minority groups are being hurt.”
Nguyen doesn’t believe that civil rights is the true motivation behind why some organizations are opposed to the Racial Privacy initiative: “Special interest groups oppose the initiative because, to them, racial data means racial power. The more data that a group can amass for themselves, the more legitimacy they can claim.” Nguyen cynically commented that the very groups who were against the bill had previously rejected the option to have a “multiracial” option on public surveys. “This would reduce the number of people identifying with a certain group,” insisted Nguyen.
The majority of APA groups feel that the Racial Privacy Initiative is a step backward in the fight for racial equality. “The government doesn’t collect information to hurt people,” said Malhotra. “They use this information to help people.”
Added Lui: “I really don’t know why [the American Civil Rights Coalition] would try to pass such a [harmful] bill. If it is a genuine attempt to bring people together, then it is extremely misguided. If it is for some political reason, then I really can’t see what they have to gain by passing the initiative.”
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