CA Prop 54: Former collaborators clash over race-related measure

The Contra Costa Times, California ^ | 09-05-03 | Carrie Sturrock

[Alia]

WALNUT CREEK - Tom Wood and Glynn Custred used to agree on most everything that had to do with race.

They agreed that race-based affirmative action was wrong. They agreed on the need to ban racial preferences in state admissions, hiring and public contracting. And so they authored Proposition 209, the initiative that made California the first state to abolish race-based affirmative action.

But those lockstep days are over. The two strongly disagree on the latest initiative designed to change the way Californians think about race. Proposition 54, spearheaded by UC Regent Ward Connerly, who campaigned for Prop. 209, is a constitutional amendment that would ban the state from collecting racial data. Proponents say it is an important step on the path to a colorblind society.

Wood argues it would make it harder to determine if the University of California is violating Prop. 209 by giving blacks and Latinos an edge in admissions. If voters approve it in the Oct. 7 special election, it would make it more difficult to ferret out and prove discrimination against all races in other areas too, he said.

"It's not like (people) are going to wake up after this thing passes -- if it does and I don't think it will -- and say 'Gee, it's sort of like waking up from a nightmare or dream.

We thought race was important and now we understand it's not important,' and stop asking questions about it," he said.

"They will keep asking questions about it. They just won't have the data."

Custred agrees that it will make it harder to enforce Prop. 209, but he believes the symbolic value that will come from no longer classifying people based on race is far more important.

Unlike Wood, he is confident it will pass. The latest Field Poll found that 46 percent of likely voters favor the initiative and 35 percent oppose it. Nineteen percent are undecided. Support, however, had ebbed from an earlier Field Poll that found the initiative ahead by 21 percentage points.

"Ward is trying to ... say, 'Look, we've gone far enough. It's time to stop thinking about race. If the state is in the business of treating people equally, then it's none of the state's business to see what race you are.'"

Wood and Custred still have a lot in common. Wood is executive director of the California Association of Scholars. Custred, an anthropology professor at Cal State Hayward, is the president of the same group. Both are actively supporting Connerly's efforts to end race-based affirmative action in Michigan.

As Custred sees it, he, Wood and Connerly still agree on the basic principle behind Prop. 209 and now, Prop. 54: that society would be better off if people were treated on the basis of individual talents instead of as representatives of a racial or ethnic group.

They disagree, he said, on the next step in the road to achieving such a colorblind world.

Wood, president of Americans Against Discrimination and Preferences, spoke out early against Prop. 54 and has written extensively about it on his group's Web site. He has found himself in league with organizations such as the NAACP and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, that once vigorously opposed him on Prop. 209.

"The problem with this initiative is that if it passes, every Californian of whatever race or ethnicity -- white, black, Asian-American, Hispanic or any permutation or combination of that -- is going to be at risk, because it will put us in a situation where we don't know what the would-be discriminators know and that's not a good thing."

A key argument Prop. 54 opponents use is that the initiative will harm health care because the exemption for medical research is too narrow.

Connerly and Custred call that a red herring. But Wood thinks the argument is legitimate and worrisome. While the federal government will continue to mandate the collection of some data, significant county, local and state data will disappear. And that could hurt epidemiologists, who research diseases in a population.

"Epidemiologists are basically data miners," he said. "They will go anywhere and merge databases ... whether the databases were created for medical research or not. They're looking for demographic patterns."

Wood called Custred when he decided to oppose Prop. 54. And for a long time, Custred saw both sides to the argument and kept quiet. But then he was vacationing in Rome and read about the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the University of Michigan case, which upheld certain forms of racial preferences in admission.

In her majority opinion, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that "... student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify the use of race in university admissions." Custred found it disturbing, and it pushed him to publicly support Connerly on Prop. 54.

"It's a racist decision," he said in the back yard of his Walnut Creek home. "What it assumes is black people won't get anywhere. That we whites need to reach down and help our little brown brothers out and we have to do that by imposing quotas. Diversity is quotas ...

"What the Supreme Court has done is move us toward the kind of society that we have been working so hard to get away from -- one which is race-obsessed. We have to get away from that sooner or later ... We're drifting toward a balkanized society."

On Tuesday, he publicly announced his support for Connerly's initiative. Unlike Wood, he believes that keeping track of race on employment or health forms fuels the problem because it perpetuates the practice of thinking in terms of race.

He acknowledges that it will make it harder to prove discrimination. He talked with prominent lawyers who said that the more evidence, the easier it is to prove a case, but insists the initiative won't make discrimination lawsuits impossible. The risk, he said, is worth it.

One of the biggest problems, he added, is this: In this society, "it's not important that you're the individual Miguel Hernandez. It's important that you're Hispanic. That's wrong."

Society is changing, he said. There are more interracial marriages and people from all over the world moving to the United States. A lot of the racial categories, such as Latino, are artificial constructs, he said.

"You say, Custred, how can you say black and white are artificial? Well, they're not in the aggregate, but when you start looking at individuals, you find people mixed up all over the place. Do you want to take them into account?"

Wood counters that just a small fraction of people in the United States -- 2.4 percent or 6.8 million -- identify themselves as of more than one race.

"People who are more than one race don't cease to have a racial identity," he said. "They have a multiracial identity."

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