Ward Connerly: We are multi-racial - but we should be colour blind -

The Telegraph - UK ^ | October 2, 2003 | Ward Connerly

[UnklGene]

We are multi-racial – but we should be colour-blind By Ward Connerly (Filed: 02/10/2003)

The unrelenting, daily racial categorisation of people by the government is one of the most divisive forces in American society. It is constantly emphasising our minor differences, in opposition to our better instincts that tell us to seek our common interests and common values.

This reality has overtaken California, where one out of nine babies born in 2002 was multi-racial. The Federal Census acknowledges this by allowing individuals to tick as many race boxes as they consider applicable, producing 63 possible race categories and one ethnic identity: Hispanic. The system of racial classification, which tracks us from cradle to grave, is arcane and inconsistent.

Some agencies use five basic race categories; others use 14, while others use 27. With an application for a home loan, the lender is required to obtain race information, but prevented from doing so if the applicant is seeking a credit card. Most agencies allow individuals to self-report, while others, such as the California Highway Patrol, impute race by visual inspection.

n some agencies, such as the University of California, an individual may tick one box today and tick another tomorrow with no proof being required to justify the change. When such information is tabulated, different practices prevail with different agencies. A Chinese applicant becomes an "Asian" student. A student with a black father and a Chinese mother is classified as black, while a student with a white father and a Chinese mother is classified as Chinese.

It is with this background that I drafted and obtained the signatures of nearly one million Californian voters to place on the ballot an initiative to begin curtailing the insidious practice of government categorisation based on race. Known as the "Racial Privacy Initiative", and officially as Proposition 54, this initiative will be voted on next Tuesday, when voters decide whether to recall Governor Gray Davis.

Proposition 54 will restrict all government agencies from classifying individuals by race, ethnicity, colour or national origin, except for medical research, diagnosis and treatment, meeting federal requirements, housing or employment complaints and for law enforcement. Proposition 54 would extend the prohibition against "preferential treatment" based on race, colour and ethnicity imposed by the passage of Proposition 209, a constitutional amendment that was enacted in 1996. I also chaired that campaign. Proposition 54 is a natural progression.

As with Proposition 209, the initiative targets public education, employment and contracting, but it also would apply to other government operations unless exempted by a two-thirds vote of the legislature and by the governor, based on a finding of "compelling state interest".

There is one objective that should be common to all societies: developing and sustaining a sense of unity. No matter how advanced, this objective is the centrepiece of a stable society.

As societies become more open to those from various backgrounds, the question of how to merge changing demographics into a common civic identity becomes increasingly problematic. Nowhere is that challenge more apparent than in California, one of the most multi-ethnic and "multi-racial" populations in the world.

American society is grounded in the Declaration of Independence on the principle that "All men are created equal". While this principle was largely ignored for nearly two centuries, it became the legal reality in the mid-1960s, when the United States Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

This Act was a direct response to the tumultuous Civil Rights Movement - an era led by Martin Luther King, Jr, a Baptist preacher who gave voice to the rallying cry that no American should be judged by the "colour of his skin". Instead, all Americans, King proclaimed, should be judged by the "content of their character".

The 1964 Act guaranteed that no person would be discriminated against in the public sphere, and that all Americans would be treated equally, "without regard to race, colour or national origin", by the government. This perspective became known as the ideal of a "colour-blind society". As America has changed into a more racially and ethnically diverse society, the colour-blind ideal has begun to surrender to the perspective that we must "celebrate our diversity".

This perspective of official acknowledgment of racial and ethnic identities has presented America, particularly in California, with some of its most pressing challenges, chief among them being difficulties stemming from immigration (legal and illegal) and affirmative action preferences, as well as bilingualism and multiculturalism.

Throughout history, government-imposed racial classifications have been used to divide people and to set them against each other. The slave owners and segregationists knew it; the Nazis knew it when they labelled European Jews a separate and inferior "race"; American judges knew it when they had to determine if Asians or part-Asians were white or non-white for the purposes of naturalisation.

Apart from the inhumanity of classifying human beings into separate breeds, the classification system is forever being attacked from within, as a result of individuals marrying across lines of race and ethnicity and having children - creating a condition of perpetual demographic change.

If approved, Proposition 54 will return California to the journey of becoming a society in which "Race has no place in American life or law", and where all of our people may some day see themselves as members of an extended human family, undivided by "race", the colour of our skin, the origin of our ancestors or the country of our birth.

The only race that will matter is the human race and the only identity of which the government will take account is our standing as "Americans".

Ward Connerly is the author of Creating Equal – My Fight against Race Preferences

[cyborg]

good post BTTT and a prop 54 PING

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