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OPPOSE the "Racial Ignorance Initiative"

The New Campaign Against Civil Rights

http://www.asianlawcaucus.org/Ward.htm

What is the Racial Ignorance Initiative?

The "Racial Ignorance Initiative" is a deceptive initiative that Ward Connerly and right-wing conservatives are trying to get on the ballot for the March 2002 election. While Connerly argues the measure will protect the "racial privacy" of individuals, the true purpose of the initiative is to dismantle our ability to monitor discrimination and protect civil rights by barring state agencies from collecting, analyzing, sorting, or acting on any data on race, ethnicity, or national origin. This dangerous initiative is designed to deceive California voters and conceal critical information on health care, educational access, housing and employment discrimination, hate violence and community needs.

What will the initiative do?

§ Endanger Community-Oriented Health Care: Doctors, nurses and public health professionals will be barred from accessing critical medical information in order to design effective health care education and outreach campaigns. Sickle cell anemia, breast cancer, infant mortality, prostate cancer and heart disease are only a few of the many health conditions that affect us differently by race and ethnicity.

§ Undermine Hate Crimes Prosecutions: The state Attorney General and public agencies will be prevented from analyzing and reporting on hate crimes trends, undermining their ability to track hate groups and focus law enforcement resources on areas of racial tensions.

§ Turn a Blind Eye on Education: Educators and administrators will be unable to accurately determine whether students of color are adequately served in our schools, whether certain groups are facing higher drop-out rates or whether students are in need of particular services.

§ Block the Fight Against Discrimination: Without data on race it will be virtually impossible to monitor or prove discrimination. The elimination of statistics on race, ethnicity, and national origin will prevent civil rights enforcement agencies from fighting discrimination in public employment, contracting, and education - areas where evidence has shown significant discrimination to occur. There will be no meaningful way to conduct studies on how racial groups are being treated or to show which programs are or are not working.

§ Ignore Community Needs: In order to design and implement cost-effective policy, state and local government need comparative data about the ways in which community problems and their proposed solutions affect different racial and ethnic populations. Without this information, legislators and public agencies will be unable to meet the unique needs of the diverse communities they serve or measure the impact of new legislation.

§ Allow for Racial Profiling: Through tricky wording, proponents are trying to mislead the public into thinking the initiative will stop police racial profiling. But by barring any inquiry into the race of individuals stopped by police, it will do exactly the opposite by making it impossible to objectively know whether or not there is racial profiling by police.

For updates, contact Susan Serrano at LCCR, 415-543-9444/sserrano@lccr.com or visit www.asianlawcaucus.org.