Race Information

April 23, 2002

City News Service

LOS ANGELES -- A proposed ballot initiative to bar government agencies from collecting information on race would hurt California, former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, D-Los Angeles, and others said today.

"This initiative will have a devastating effect on California's diverse communities," Villaraigosa said.

"As Californians, we have come a long way toward making the American dream a reality for all people, but there is still much work to be done," he said. Villaraigosa made his remarks at the Clinica Oscar Romero in Pico-Union.

He was joined by Erica Teasley of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Sylvia Drew Ivie of T.H.E. Clinic, Jeannie Oakes, a UCLA professor and others.

The proposed ballot initiative has been led by Ward Connerly, an African- American businessman, member of the University of California Board of Regents and founder and chair of the American Civil Rights Institute.

The initiative is called the Racial Privacy Initiative.

Connerly wants "to move this state beyond race and to unite us as one people so that we can all be Americans and not a balkanized collection of hyphenated Americans," said Kevin Nguyen, ACRI's executive director.

Connerly also led the campaign for Proposition 209, according to the ACRI, which was approved by 55 percent of the voters in November 1996.

The proposition barred the state from giving preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity, color or national origin in public education, employment and contracting.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the Racial Privacy Initiative would, for example, prevent researchers from finding out how anti- smoking campaigns can be designed to reach different communities.

"Ward Connerly and his supporters are playing a game of 'Russian roulette' with California's public health initiatives, public education and civil rights protections," Villaraigosa said.

Nguyen said organizers have collected 980,000 signatures for the initiatives and 670,000 are required.

If state officials certify it quickly enough, the measure could be placed on the November ballot, Nguyen said. If not, the public would vote on it during the March 2004 election, he said.

Several bar associations and elected officials, including Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, have gone on record in opposition to the proposed initiative, according to the ACLU.