UNITED STATES: California Embraces Anti-Affirmative Action Measure

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Michael Novick

CULVER CITY, CALIFORNIA, Nov 8 1996 (IPS) - California voters’ approval of a measure to outlaw preferential treatment based on race and sex in state hiring, contracting, and college admissions has prompted court action by opponents of the initiative.

Under a system that allows direct law-making by popular vote, California voted 54-46 Tuesday to roll back state-sponsored affirmative action.

Affirmative action — the use by government of outreach, recruiting methods, and numerical goals to extend educational opportunities, employment, and government contracts to women and members of racial minority groups — proved to be especially unpopular among whites here.

Some 60 percent of whites who went to the polls voted for the initiative on the state ballot known as Proposition 209, according to exit polls by the media. Blacks and Latinos voted against it at rates higher than 70 percent, while Asian-Americans’ voters were split fairly evenly.

And despite the concerted efforts of the initiative’s opponents to portray the measure primarily as an attack on women’s rights, a slight majority of all women — and 57 percent of white women polled — voted in favor of the anti-affirmative action measure.

The initiative was one of 90 voted on in different states Tuesday. California and Arizona opted to legalise the use of marijuana as medicine to alleviate nausea or pain. The state of Maine said ‘no’ to a ban on the clear-cutting of forests, and Florida gave the thumbs-down to a tax on sugar producers that would have created revenue to clean up the Everglades, a large tract of swamp land in southern Florida.

In California, opponents of Proposition 209 immediately filed a lawsuit in federal court against California Governor Pete Wilson, other state officials, and municipalities to try to block the law.

“No statewide measure in American history has ever come close…to Proposition 209’s choke-hold on state and local government,” says a summary of the arguments in the lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of the Coalition for Economic Equity, a grouping of civil rights and women’s organisations.

But backers of the initiative have prepared their own lawsuits to enforce the measure against recruitment programmes they deem to be discriminatory against whites. Many have apparently bought the argument that affirmative action constitutes unfair, “reverse discrimination” against white males.

Proposition 209 backers boldly called their measure the ‘California Civil Rights initiative’ and even ran a TV ad for a ‘yes’ vote which incorporated footage of Martin Luther King, Jr., until the slain civil rights leader’s family objected. The campaign carefully used Blacks and women as spokespeople.

The state Republican Party campaign, as well as the Bob Dole presidential campaign in California, had attached itself to the ballot measure, hoping it would reap a harvest of white voters.

For its part, the Democratic Party and the Bill Clinton campaign in the state offered only lukewarm support for the principle of affirmative action, with Clinton’s slogan “Mend it, don’t end it!”

Behind the scenes, the party threatened to withhold funding from Democratic politicians and office holders who were too outspoken in their opposition to the measure, deeming such actions a threat to Clinton’s re-election.

This strategy was successful for Clinton. He carried the state handily, even as the measure he had tepidly opposed was approved.

Critics charge that the initiative’s support relates partly to the economic interest of some big and small businesses to have unfgttered access to government contracts and subsidies, and partly to the state government’s own fiscal interest in restricting access to and enrollment in public higher education.

The Pro-209 campaign was carefully orchestrated and well- financed. It was picked up by Governor Wilson immediately after his re-election in 1994 on the coattails of the anti-immigrant hysteria that fueled another measure — Proposition 187 — that sought to deny social services to illegal immigrants. Wilson had his eye on the White House at the time.

Even after his national campaign fizzled, Wilson continued to press the issue at the state level, calling a special meeting of the Regents of the University of California to push through the abolition of race- and sex-based preferential treatment in university admissions and hiring. This has already resulted in a reduction of black and Latino admissions to the university system.

“California will be judged by one standard and one alone: their individual merit,” Wilson said this week. “I can think of no better way to re-instill the basic American principle of equality for all under the law.”

The governor arranged for Ward Conerly, a black conservative member of the university’s Board of Regents, to become the main spokesperson for the measure, replacing the two white college professors who had initiated it. With Wilson and Conerly’s backing, the financing and staffing necessary to get the measure on the ballot was quickly forthcoming.

Wilson promptly issued an executive order Wednesday, directing state agencies to identify programmes that grant or encourage preferences based on race or sex. He added that state agencies should aim to “recruit qualified applicants from all segments of the relevant work force.”

Citizens’ initiatives in recent years have seen similar passage of laws to cut social spending and others that were well-financed measures written by banks and insurance companies and other big economic special interests.

The construction industry in the state as well as contractors who already make massive profits building California’s prisons and roads have a special interest in Proposition 209. They have their eyes on the 20 percent of construction designated for smaller businesses owned by women and minority groups under the state’s affirmative action programmes.

Conerly, in addition to being a University of California Regent, is a paid lobbyist for an association of these contractors.