Thomas E. Wood
February 22, 2003

I write as the co-author and official proponent, with Glynn Custred, of the California Civil Rights Initiative (Prop. 209), the successful 1996 ballot measure that prohibits discrimination and preferential treatment on the basis of race, sex, and ethnicity by state and local governments in California.

A proposed amendment to the California constitution has qualified for the March 2004 ballot, called the Racial Privacy Initiative (RPI). If there is a special election called by the state legislature over a budget impasse, or as a result of the Gov. Davis recall petition that is being circulated, it is possible that the RPI will be on a special ballot much sooner, conceivably by early fall of this year.

If adopted by voters, the RPI would become Article I, Section 32 of the California State Constitution. (Prop. 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative, is Article I, Section 31 of the state constitution.) The RPI is very broadly worded and goes well beyond the issue of the “racial checkboxes” on government forms. However, so far as racial data collection is concerned, the proponents of the measure have accurately described it as one “designed to eliminate racial check-off boxes on most California government forms.”

I will be speaking to the Initiatives Committee of the California Republican Party on Saturday morning, February 22, during the state party convention in Sacramento, urging—even imploring—the committee to vote down a resolution it will be considering that would have the CRP endorse the RPI.

Many critics of the RPI within the state GOP have already expressed grave concern about the impact that the RPI will undoubtedly have the party’s prospects with the minority vote in California in 2004. That concern is entirely justified, as shown by the fact that the minority and Democratic Party activists in the state have already lined up solidly against the measure.

One of the arguments these activists will make to their constituencies is that the RPI is a threat to them because it will inevitably weaken the protection they presently have against racial and ethnic discrimination. This claim cannot be refuted because it is correct. Furthermore, these activists will easily be able to explain why it is correct. The reason is, simply, that racial statistics are essential to showing a “pattern and practice” of discrimination. Demonstrating this is indispensable to enforcing antidiscrimination laws.

What has been overlooked within the California Republican Party, however, is that the GOP must also reject the RPI if it wants to avoid problems with rank-and-file GOP voters in the state. As is well known, the GOP in California, as in other states, draws its greatest support (though certainly not its only support) from white, conservative voters. I can predict with confidence that the measure will also be rejected on election day by a majority of these voters. 

This is of course an even weightier reason for the Initiatives Committee to reject the resolution to endorse the RPI that it will consider on Feb. 22 than the argument that is based on a concern about the impact on minority voters. It is a foregone conclusion, and I suppose widely acknowledged and conceded, that if the California Republican Party endorses the RPI, it will endorse a measure that will be vehemently opposed by a large majority of minority voters in the state. That in itself would be bad for the GOP, particularly in 2004. But it would be even worse for the California GOP to endorse a measure that on election day will be rejected by a majority of Republican voters. I show in a paper entitled “Why It Will Lose: Comparing the Electoral Prospects of the RPI with CCRI/209,” that this is what will happen, based in part on a comparison of early Field Poll results for CCRI/209 and the RPI.

The fact that the RPI would make antidiscrimination laws virtually unenforceable has obvious implications for white voters, for the conservative vote, and for the GOP. That is because the highest law on the matter in California (apart from federal law) is Prop. 209 (now Article I, Section 31 of the state constitution). Because of Prop. 209, every individual in California is in a protected class so far as racial and ethnic discrimination is concerned. Any measure like the RPI that prohibits racial data collection will make it virtually impossible to protect the rights of whites (and in many cases, Asian Americans as well) under 209 in all those areas of state and local government in which reverse discrimination has been a problem.

This is certainly not the only reason for voting against the RPI, but it is clearly a sufficient one, and it is one that should be of particular concern to the GOP. There is a mountain of survey research showing that voters believe (correctly) that discrimination of every sort on the basis of race and ethnicity is a serious problem, and that voters want government to do something about it. 

It is useless to have a law that cannot be enforced. That is why every California voter—Democrat or Republican, and of every race and ethnicity—must oppose the Racial Privacy Initiative.