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Connerly makes his case

Ward Connerly Interview with California Journal editors

June 2, 2001

Copyright 2001 State Net(R)
California Journal

The latest U.S. Census made it official: California is the first state in America without a majority ethnic population. It is a landmark that culminates a time of rapid, dynamic and major change in California - not all of it smooth. The last decade saw traumatic public debates about whether taxpayers should fund health, education and other benefits for illegal immigrants, whether schools should teach bilingual education and whether women and minorities should receive preferences in university admissions, government contracts and jobs. This month, state officials will determine whether another in California's series of racially charged ballot measures has qualified for the upcoming November election. The Racial Privacy Initiative, as its authors have named it, "prohibits state [and] local governments from using race, ethnicity, color or national origin to classify current or prospective students, contractors, or employees in public education, contracting or employment operations." In other words, it would eliminate the boxes on myriad government forms, applications and paperwork that currently identify the author's race. It is a debate that is likely to be inflammatory. The measure's sponsor is Ward Connerly, a University of California regent and the chief sponsor of the 1996 proposition that ended affirmative action programs in California. He says in this interview with California Journal, race today is "irrelevant." It is not a factor that should be considered in government decisions, and it is no longer valid in a society that has a large and growing multi-racial population, he claims. Government data collection about race, however, has been a critical tool for numerous landmark policy and court decisions. Opponents of the measure are concerned that it will remove a critical tool for detecting problems and identifying solutions on a range of topics like housing, poverty, education, public safety and health care. Supporters of the initiative submitted more than 1 million signatures to state elections' officials, more than enough to qualify the measure for the ballot if they are affirmed in the validation process that is underway. Debate about the idea has also not yet reached the public arena. In May, however, the independent Field Poll found roughly half of the state's registered voters support the idea and about one third are opposed. The support was widespread, spanning both Republicans and Democrats, all age groups and nearly every region of the state. White voters backed the idea in equal proportion to Latinos while African Americans were evenly split and Asian voters were opposed. If the measure qualifies, state voters will once again face a provocative and wrenching, and perhaps divisive, confrontation about race, melting pots and what it means to be a Californian today.

Q: Why did you launch the Racial Privacy Initiative?

A: I think we need to bring the governmental sector into line with what happens in our private lives. As a private businessman, I can't ask anybody about their race when I interview them for a job. Yet my government feels it needs to have that information. And often, it is just pure garbage, because what is an African American? What is a Latino? Is somebody from Cuba - fair skinned, blonde hair - just as much of a Latino, subject to the same treatment in our society as somebody from Mexico, with dark skin? No. So these definitions, these classifications are just downright silly. So we need to get beyond them and to bring the public sector into line with what is really happening in the private world.

The Racial Privacy Initiative is the brainchild of yours truly. It is designed to gradually move from this race-obsessed governmental sector, to one where, as John F. Kennedy said in 1963, race has no place in American life or law. That is what it is designed to do. And here are its major features. The government shall not classify, profile, sort people on the basis of race, color, ethnicity or national origin in public education, public contracting or public employment. That parallels [the anti-affirmative action laws adopted in the 1996] Proposition 209. Proposition 209 says you can't treat people differently, you can't give a preference, you can't discriminate. So why do you need the data? Now, our opponents will have an argument that we need to have the data to know how well we are doing. What do you mean how well we're doing? _ What value is derived from collecting data, especially when the data going in is often just pure garbage? The largest growing sector, demographic group, at the University of California is those who decline to state [a racial category]. And then the insult is that after they decline to state, the university distributes them among the different groups who do state.

Q: Are there exceptions in the initiative for collecting racial data for special purposes?

A: In areas other than public education - public contracting , public employment - the prohibition [against racial data collection] applies except when the Legislature, by a two-thirds vote in both houses and with the concurrence of the governor, can find that there is a compelling state interest for the data. They can override the prohibition of the Racial Privacy Initiative and then mandate the collection of the data and sort it on that basis. I don't know what would be compelling, but this is trying to provide a reasonable approach. We [also] exempt medical treatment and medical research for obvious reasons. If there is any legitimacy to this concept of race, it is that there are illnesses endemic to some certain, quote, groups. We don't want anyone to be at risk because they were admitted to the hospital and someone says there was a disease that is really endemic to this group and we didn't know that and the patient died. We provide that escape. We also provide an exemption for the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing. This is the state's chief anti-discrimination watchdog. We want to make sure they are left in business to investigate claims of discrimination.

Q: How would government enforce or detect discrimination laws if it cannot track racial patterns?

A: If I believe that I've been discriminated against because of my religion, let's say, or because of my sexual orientation or because of my age or because of my disability, the government doesn't have that [data collection] information to begin with. I have to go in and say, I believe that there was discrimination. Somebody follows up on that. We're saying, treat race the same way. It's an individual matter, an individual complaint. Race needs to be accorded the same status or non-status as religion, political affiliation, sexual orientation.

Q: There are purposes for this information beyond those you talk about. Is there any reason for government to track for historical purposes?

A: I can't find any. As the population is changing, how do you track my grandkids who are part Vietnamese, part Irish, part Native American, part African descent? As the population is changing because of its fluidity, and as the anthropologists and scientists are saying that race is largely social, you're tracking a moving target, constantly. So I don't know what historical benefit there is. If social scientists want to do that, they can do that. But the government is saying we are not going to do that.

Q: Regarding issues like housing, do you think we should detect problems and target solutions based on economic indicators and not racial measures?

A: Yeah. And I think that by doing that we get more of a consensus from people to solve the problem. If we are continually saying we have this problem of black people, number one, then black people see themselves as almost forever consigned to this status of not being able to make it. And a lot of middle-class people really get a little bit impatient with all of this emphasis on helping that group.

Q: What about a study that indicates Hispanics have a high dropout rate in school? Does it help to know that this rate is high among this group?

A: If Hispanics are dropping out at a higher rate, it would be interesting to know if these are people from Mexico who don't speak good English and the man in the household doesn't want his daughter to go to school. There are all kinds of reasons involved, but to say that the dropout rate of Hispanics is yada yada is virtually meaningless. _ We've looked at race-based [university] admissions and why the gap between black and white and black and Asian is widening, despite the fact the black middle class is growing and the opportunities are there. Anybody who wants to get an education in California can get it. It is not a lack of resources. Some of our lowest K-12 school districts get some of the highest funding. So it's not a linkage between race and performance. It's income, whether their parents went to college. Those kinds of factors are very relevant.

Q: Will the debate over this initiative be divisive along racial lines, as Proposition 209 was?

A: Well, I don't have any misgivings about the quality of the public debate about 209. Even in our worst moment, we learn something. This, I think, promises to be one of the best public debates about race and going to the core of what race is - what is it? Am I different because my skin color is different from the majority in this room? Does that somehow make me different? Is there really a black race? I think it will be a good debate. It doesn't bother me that it's divisive. Public policy is divisive. We tend to run away from tough issues because, oh boy, it might be divisive. And my party is one that I am fighting with constantly because they are twisting themselves into a pretzel about not being divisive on certain issues but terribly divisive on other issues. I don't think this debate will be as personal as 209 to the different, quote, groups. When you talk about affirmative action, there is the belief that you are taking something away. You are taking away a benefit that black people, that women, that Hispanics were presumed to be receiving. It was nonsense, but that was the campaign they could wage. It's going to be pretty difficult to make that case here. There are an awful lot of black people of my generation who hate the one-drop rule. The American Civil Liberties Union, which will oppose this issue, for years argued that racial classifications shouldn't be on government forms. The National Association of Colored People had the same position. Our opposition will come from that triumvirate of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, ACLU and NAACP. And the reason is that they know that benefits flow from the classifications.

Q: Describe the "one-drop" rule.

A: I have two grandparents who are at least half Irish, one of them is half Choctaw, [and] only one grandparent I have is of the African descent. I love them all. I am proud of them all. But every time, the story is Ward Connerly, the black [University of California] regent, the African-American regent. It's the one-drop rule. And the minute that my granddaughter, Katie, is known to be a descendant of Ward Connerly, she is African American. It's not a matter of my detractors saying, you don't want to be black. You don't have any ethnic pride _ No, it's not that. It's a matter of choice. It's a matter of being whatever you want to be. And you don't have to be anything. I have no allegiance to any group. I have no desire to be attached to any group. That's just my part-libertarian instinct.

Q: What is the legal precedent for this initiative? A lot of landmark court decisions have been based on racial data collection. If this passes and it is challenged in court, how do you think it will stand up to legal scrutiny?

A: I don't know. First of all, you know there is going to be a challenge. There's never been an initiative yet where there hasn't been a challenge. So there is going to be a challenge. We are breaking new ground here a little bit, and I don't know what the courts would do. This isn't about preferences, this is about the very system of sorting people and classifying them by these traits. It's fundamental. You can almost see the briefs right now. What is race, your honor? Is it the color of my skin? Well, if that's the case, what about Colin Powell in relation to Oprah Winfrey? What is race? Is it about nose size? Well, we can change that, you know. Is it hair texture? So you can almost see right now the questions emerging. What is race? And the anthropologists are just rubbing their palms now because they have been saying for a long time that the differences within these races are far greater than the differences between the races. In Wisconsin, you can change your race three times a year. If it's that fluid, what is this all about? You can change your race three times for school purposes.

Q: According to the title of the initiative, you are casting this as a privacy issue. Do you think you'll be successful in casting this as a privacy issue instead of a racial one?

A: I think so. The surveys that we've done _ suggest that people do see their race as a private issue. _ And when you ask them what is their race, it's like asking, how much money do you make? Most people resent it. Why do you want to know? I think it will not be difficult at all to argue that it's none of the government's business.

Q: What did polls say about the initiative's popularity?

A: It is very popular.

Q: So do you think the race will be close or not?

A: I think [the initiative] will pass overwhelmingly. We get on the ballot, and we will argue what it is, that the government ought to treat race the way it treats religion and political affiliation and sexual orientation. And the other side will say this is the most draconian concept to come along. One of them will say we won't be able to track infant mortality any more and we'll have no way of knowing whether discrimination occurs and that will take them into the area of preferences and that, then, will force me to say, yeah, I know what you want to do with this information. But that isn't where I want the debate to go. I want it to stay on why is it relevant for the government? Why is it compelling to know? Is it just curiosity? You can't do anything with it in public education, public contracting and public employment. So, are you just curious about it?

Copyright © 2002, LEXIS-NEXIS®, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.