Amid the hoopla that was last week's California recall election was a ballot measure rejected by the voters who came to vote for the Golden State's future governor.
That proposition was Proposition 54, a controversial measure that would have restricted state and local governments, schools, hospitals and other public institutions from "classifying" (or collecting and using) information on an individual's race, ethnicity, color or national origin. Almost two-thirds (64 percent) of the voters said "no" to the proposition, also known as the Racial Privacy Initiative.
For many voters in the medical field, the concern was that such restrictions in a hospital setting would limit the collection of racial information for epidemiological or disease-related studies.
Executive director Carla Woodworth of the California Physician's Alliance, a state-wide group of 1,500 physicians and public health officials, told the University of Southern California's student newspaper, The Daily Trojan, that the proposition was a threat to public health.
"If we can't collect data, then we can't see, for example, that white women are more affected by breast cancer," she said.
This argument is true, but in a way, the proposition never really had a chance.
Pushed onto the ballot by Ward Connerly, a former University of California regent, the businessman argued that ending race classifications would create a more positive, race-blind government.
His beliefs had little effect in raising financial support for the initiative, as the American Civil Rights Coalition was the only group to spend close to $100,000 on its campaign. On the other hand, The Coalition for an Informed California spent at least $5 million to defeat the proposal, with an additional $4 million-plus reportedly coming from Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante.
You may ask where I'm going with all this, but bear with me. Because, though I see the point of the opposition, I believe, with some changes, this proposition could work on the ballot in 2006.
For example, if Connerly met with informed outsiders to ensure that the proposition would not interfere with public health (the primary objection in this case) then would Proposition 54 really be all that bad? I think that answer could be "no."
After all, haven't we always been told that labeling people based on racial background or ancestry is a bad thing? An invasion of privacy? Why shouldn't our goal be to create a more unified America where it doesn't matter if you are black, white, Hispanic or Asian?
And, if California's constitution forbids its government from discriminating against or granting preferential treatment based on race, then why should such labeling be allowed to continue?
The reason is, as much as we'd like to hope, this country certainly isn't color-blind. As long as people tend to believe that race shapes our country's public policy -- its health care, its education, its civil rights laws -- then it will.
As USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky told the Daily Trojan, "The reality is, race matters in our society ... it matters in how we are affected by disease, it matters in how we are treated by police and how we are treated by the people around us."
Maybe someday, a revised Proposition 54 will make headway in seeing that it shouldn't.
Write to Gail at glkoch@bsu.edu
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