Positions on I-200 are Fluid
Positions on I-200 are Fluid by David Postman and Tom Brune
Seattle Times staff reporters
Although nearly all Washington voters believe discrimination against minorities and women still exists, most don't think affirmative action as now practiced is the way to end it.
Those are among the findings of a new Seattle Times Washington Poll of voters across the state, a poll that also finds most think affirmative action benefits unqualified people and discriminates against white men. And a majority feel that 30 years after government policies based on race and gender began, it's time to stop using them to make up for past discrimination.
Those feelings are fueling early support for Initiative 200, the November ballot measure that would ban race and gender preferences in state and local government. Nearly two-thirds of likely voters - 64 percent - would vote for I-200 if they went to the voting booth today, the poll indicates.
At the same time, 93 percent of the poll respondents said they believe racial discrimination persists, and 80 percent acknowledged continued discrimination against women.
Typical is Carol Buchanan, a technical writer who lives in English Hill near Redmond.
"I think affirmative action has done a great deal of good to bring women and minorities into the workplace. We have a much more diverse workplace than we did, and that's cool," said Buchanan, 57, who is white. "But now, it is beginning to cause considerable resentment against different races and is starting to foster racism instead of preventing it."
She intends to vote for I-200.
Support for the initiative cuts across geographic location, economic and educational status, age, political affiliation and gender. The only aggregate groups strongly opposed to I-200 are people of color, who constitute only 10 percent of Washington's voting-age population, and residents of the city of Seattle.
Many voters' positions on I-200, though, are still fluid.
When given the ballot title - "The state shall not discriminate against - or grant preferential treatment to - any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting" - 64 percent said they would vote for I-200.
But when voters are told that the initiative would "effectively end affirmative action for women and minorities in state and local government, public education and college admissions" - a description that captures its expected impact - I-200 retains a plurality but loses its majority.
Specifically, after being read that description, 49 percent said they are for it, 35 percent were against it and 16 percent were undecided or wouldn't say.
That softness in the vote - along with indications that most Washingtonians oppose preferences in hiring and admissions but support some of affirmative action in principle - mirrors the results of polling on these issues across the country.
It also sets the stage for the battle over the definition of I-200 as "anti-preference" or "anti-affirmative action," a semantic fight that will be more public after Labor Day as the two sides seek to win votes in the Nov. 3 election.
To gauge Washington voters' perceptions of affirmative action and I-200, The Times hired Elway Research of Seattle to poll 400 likely voters - those who have voted in at least two of the past four elections. The poll, which was conducted by telephone from June 19 to 21 and followed up with several in-depth interviews, has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.
The poll reveals the mixed feelings many have about discrimination and opportunity in education and on the job.
The term "affirmative action," said pollster Stuart Elway, "has accumulated a lot of baggage."
"People support the goals" of affirmative action," Elway said. "They are just opposed to the means.
"They are just trying to puzzle their way through this, asking, `How do I, as a decent citizen, achieve this end without these odious quotas and other things we object to?' "
Eight of every 10 polled agreed that affirmative action was needed 30 years ago. But only four in 10 said it is still needed.
When presented with the options of keeping affirmative action as is, mending it or ending it outright, most agreed with the statement, "It is good in principle but needs to be reformed." That's true even of those who favor I-200.
I-200 supporters want 'reform'
For supporters of the initiative, the poll indicates, "reform" may mean the same thing as ending affirmative action. More than half of those who say they are for I-200 said a "yes" vote would do away with affirmative action.
That view is backed up by their answers to other questions: Sixty-one percent of those for I-200 said they oppose affirmative action for minorities and women. Fifty-seven percent of them said they oppose affirmative action in college admissions and in the workplace. And 58 percent of them said they oppose affirmative action for any reason.
"I think it had its place for a while, but they got too carried away with it," said Ilse Trujillo, a German-born bookkeeper who came here in 1962 after marrying a Mexican-American serviceman based in her hometown. "It needs correcting, somehow or another."
I-200 might be the way to do it, she said, even though she believes affirmative action is "good in principle."
It helped her son get into Washington State University, a step her late husband would have hated. "If he had been alive, my son would not have gotten to accept the minority scholarship," she said.
But he did, and that enabled him to go on and get a master's degree at Stanford University. Nonetheless, Trujillo is considering voting for I-200.
Not that affirmative action doesn't have plenty of strong supporters. Their views tend to differ dramatically from the majority. For one thing, most affirmative-action supporters reject the notion that the policies require hiring unqualified workers or discriminate against white men.
Dirk Park, a white printer who lives in Seattle's Central Area, favors keeping affirmative action as it is. The reason? "I have two daughters, and my assumption is that if affirmative action was not the law of the land, their potential in the future would be adversely affected.
"We should have institutions reflect the diversity of our culture and our balance of male and female," Park said. "I think in the end it will work itself out. Like anything in the United States, it's the process that's the most difficult. But once we get through it, we will be better off in the end."
More men than women back initiative
The poll found that although the initiative is favored by women, the level of support (59 percent) is smaller than it is for men (70 percent).
"I have seen enormous changes because of affirmative action, but it's going to take another generation - or at least another decade - until we don't need it," said Linda Brown, a teacher at Yakima's Davis High School, who opposes I-200.
Brown says by watching the Hispanic students at her school, she knows society needs to do more to create equal opportunity.
"Even with all of the, quote, help that is being given, it's still not fair and it's not equal, because the homes they are coming from are not yet equal," Brown said. "The homes they come from are like dragging an anchor with them to school.
"Affirmative action just allows them to dream bigger."
Yet even Brown agrees that affirmative action needs reform. That view was common: Of those opposing I-200, more favored reforming affirmative action than favored keeping it as it is.
That reflects the broader sense of conflict in what people say they feel about affirmative action.
For example, 56 percent said affirmative action forces employers and schools to hire and admit unqualified minorities and women over better qualified men. But 65 percent agreed with the statement: "Affirmative action is a tool to give qualified women and minorities equal opportunity to compete for positions, based on their abilities."
It's a tool, but one that doesn't work as well as Washington residents would like. And it involves some policies people like and some they don't.
"There are so many things that could be done other than saying so many people of X color and Y color and Z color should be in such and such a job," said retired Redmond teacher Carol Rebeschini. "Never mind their color."
She thinks discrimination exists but doesn't think affirmative action is likely to ever solve the root of America's race problems.
Rebeschini looks at the problem from her perspective as a retired teacher as well as from her current vocation as a real-estate agent.
More money needs to be spent on education, she said, so people will be better prepared to compete.
Housing prices need to come down, too. Today, she says, it's just too hard for the disadvantaged to move out of poverty.
"Look where minorities live. Look where women with no husbands live," she said. "You'll find they are having a heck of a time."
Don't require or demand
The poll asked voters whether they wanted to keep or eliminate a list of affirmative-action programs. Most support outreach, education and recruitment programs. But they oppose public contract set-asides, as well as goals and timetables for hiring minorities and women.
It's a laissez-faire approach: educate, encourage, recruit, reach out. But don't require or demand.
"I was a principal in the Cashmere School District, and for whatever reason they needed a certain quota. And in a small area like this, sometimes you just get a few candidates for each job and you're restricted," said Conrad Lautensleger, now retired.
"I think it discriminates against the best-qualified candidate," he said. "We had to eliminate a certain group of people because we had to hire minorities."
He knows the idea is to end past discrimination against minorities and women. "But I don't believe that's the way you do it," he said. "You don't legislate it."
Ending discrimination, Lautensleger said, "is a very slow, evolutionary sort of thing. I'm not sure how you make it happen."
But he added, "Start with the children. I'm a retired educator, and I know you can do so much with kids."
That's something that Carl Nielsen just can't wait for. Nielsen, a 71-year-old retiree living near Chehalis, said he didn't think much about prejudice and affirmative action until he looked for work to fill his retirement years.
"I always get insulted when someone doesn't want me to do something because they think I'm old," he said.
Not that he was ever told that outright.
"They say, `There's no opening right now. We'll call you.' I hope I was never like that when I was young."
Nielsen plans to vote against I-200 because he sees affirmative action as a way "to get people in the door, but not promote them ahead of people who are more qualified."
Sour grapes
Complaints that affirmative action gives a boost to unqualified people is sour grapes, according to Birdell Easter, a retired African-American woman who began a 32-year career in the airline industry in 1962.
"There are a lot of people who feel like they should have a certain job, and when they don't get it, they blame affirmative action," she said.
Longtime Ellensburg resident Harriet Jackson plans to vote against I-200 because she thinks society needs to do more to eliminate discrimination.
As a Native American, she says, she knows the problem firsthand.
She concedes the current system doesn't work perfectly but thinks it's better than nothing. And she has doubts about calls for reform.
"If they do away with what we've got, then what are they going to put in its place that will work? There is no alternative."
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Carl
Gutiérrez-Jones
Department of English
University of California, Santa Barbara
e-mail: carlgj@humanitas.ucsb.edu