Ballot Initiative Called Misleading

Foes line up against proposal to scrap affirmative action

Petitions seeking to scrap affirmative action programs in Florida mean different things to different people.

To some, they are part of an ``anti-discrimination'' measure.

To others, they are an attack on racial quotas.

If the intent of the petitions is murky, one thing is abundantly clear: a lot of people are signing them -- 55,000 at last count.

Supporters of affirmative action say the petition language is intentionally confusing.

``Floridians are being misled, deceived and confused into believing that an anti-affirmative action measure called the Florida Civil Rights Initiative supports equality and ends discrimination,'' said Leon Russell, president of the state NAACP and leader in a grass-roots coalition of advocacy groups named Floridians Representing Equity and Equality.

The group, known as FREE, includes the Florida chapters of the National Organization for Women, the National Bar Association, the Hispanic Bar Association, the Florida Association of Minority Business Enterprises and others joined in an effort to preserve affirmative action.

``If passed, the Florida Civil Rights Initiative would make any government-sponsored program targeted to help minorities and women illegal,'' Russell said.

But those seeking to end affirmative action say they only want to give voters a chance to bring fairness to all.

``The initiative was started by the original spirit of the civil rights act and the civil rights movement,'' said Kevin Nguyen, a spokesman for the American Civil Rights Coalition, the Sacramento, Calif.-based, nonprofit association that successfully lobbied voters to approve affirmative action bans in California and Washington state.

Ward Connerly, a conservative black businessman who is the nation's leading foe of affirmative action, is the coalition's chairman.

``If someone has a problem with the initiative's wording, then they will have to re-evaluate their support for the 1964 civil rights act,'' Nguyen said, referring to the federal legislation that outlawed race-based discrimination in the United States.

To ensure that they achieve their goal, affirmative-action foes are paying private contractors up to $1.50 for each name they gather. The effort is mainly concentrated in Tampa because of its compact population base, supporters say.

According to several polls, most whites do not favor the way affirmative action works now, and would opt to get rid of it.

Since whites dominate voting in almost every state, including Washington, California and Florida, the measure is likely to win here.

If the measure passes in Florida -- a state with a large minority population -- it may pass easily in other states until, one by one, all public affirmative-action policies are eliminated, some experts say.

In Florida, petition gatherers are on street corners and in front of shops and restaurants.

Multiple versions

Associates of Connerly are circulating four versions of the constitutional amendment, hoping that Florida's Supreme Court will approve the wording of one or more of them.

Women are left out of three of the four petitions. Supporters of the move say they are doing it this way to ensure that the state Supreme Court approves the wording of at least one of the petitions.

But to some, the effort smacks of an intentional mis-education campaign. Some say the move is a political ploy aimed at dividing affirmative-action supporters.

Others say the move seeks to drum up support for a Republican candidate in the November 2000 elections by drawing out conservative voters.

``You're either for or against preferences,'' said Jim Kane, editor of Florida Voter Magazine. ``You don't just exclude one group versus another. I think that by dropping gender, they're going to be getting support from women voters to sign this petition. It is an attempt to make sure they don't have any significant opposition from women on these measures once they reach the ballot.''

A local NAACP official agreed.

``If they separate it along race, then they can have the white females on their side,'' said Nethel Stephens, a member of Fort Lauderdale's NAACP branch who is working to educate voters about the initiative.

``That shows their true motive,'' Stephens said. ``To me, they're only telling part of the story. They're only battling one section of the story, which is the race part.''

Women's group leaders, however, say they'll be on the lookout for ballot language that may, in fact, cut opportunities for women.

``Women are not that stupid,'' said Toni Van Pelt, president of the Florida chapter of the National Organization for Women.

Motives questioned

Her group is working to get female voters to understand how the anti-affirmative action measure would affect women.

``My feeling is it's just racism at its worst,'' Van Pelt said. ``If we do away with affirmative action, the doors will be slammed shut for women and minorities.''

Racism and politics are not the motives for the four different measures, said Herb Harmon, senior adviser for the Florida Civil Rights Initiative, which is organizing the petition drive.

His group just wants to get the measure on the ballot, he said.

``We have excluded gender . . . simply to narrow the subject matter to get it approved by the Supreme Court,'' Harmon said.

The Florida Supreme Court, unlike those in California and Washington, has a history of striking down broad-based initiatives, he said.

So the four separate petition questions are designed ``to narrow the subject matter to the extreme . . . in order to pass constitutional muster,'' Harmon said.

But why focus on race instead of gender?

Race is a bigger factor in university admissions, Harmon said.

And gender preferences hardly play a role in education, said Nguyen.

``When you talk about preferences in education, they tend to be racial,'' Nguyen said.

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Carl Gutiérrez-Jones
Department of English
University of California, Santa Barbara
e-mail: carlgj@humanitas.ucsb.edu