California's Prop 54: Racial Privacy Initiative

[badams52]

If you haven't heard already, there's a new Proposision on the recall ballot for the California election to be held October 7th. This new proposition will prevent California governments (state and local) from collecting data on Californian's race or ethnicity. It's written by Ward Connerly (an affirmative action foe) and he says it will take California "beyond race--to stop living the hyphen"

According to Time, right now it's about 50% for and 29% against this proposition.

I'm not so sure this is a good idea. Some of the opponents point out that making associations between diseases and ethnicity will become more difficult as death certificates won't include race. Schools and Unis won't be able to collect racial data, and so forth. :S

What's your take on Prop 54?

http://www.calvoter.org/recall/prop54.html

[MichaeltheGreat]

I think it's a good idea.

The bit about tracking ethnicity and diseases is an ignorant and scientifically bogus stretch - Sickle Cell anemia is the largest and best documented example of an assumed "racial" disease that in fact isn't "racial" or "ethnic" at all - the carrier gene has been favorably selected for in the so-called "malaria belt" including some middle east caucasians, many tropical and subtropical Latinamerican indigenous populations have it to a high extent. Many areas of Africa, and Hispanics of primarily European and non-tropical LA indigenous descent have only random occurances of the mutant carrier gene.

The real distribution is not only unrelated to social concepts of "race," it is radically different.

Other genetic diseases like Tay-Sachs occur only in very distinct genetic groups, which are far too narrowly defined to fit a "race" category.

There's no good reason to keep an antiquated social construct.

[Nubclear]

NO!!!

[Odin]

YES!!!

[Imran Siddiqui]

I voted yes. This is a very good idea.

[GePap]

NO. How can the state know if it is fulfilling its civil right commitments without this data?

A great case of simplistic ideology over good policy.

[MichaeltheGreat]

If "civil rights commitments" mean numerical quotas for everything, then you've got a point. I mean, how can we assure equality under the law without simplistic labels to segregate everyone under.

The way you meet civil rights commitments is to examine complaints and issues on their specific merits, rather than hiding behind statistics and quotas that are near meaningless anyway.

Unless you want to go back to legal standards defining who's white and who's colored, and putting that data on their birth records.

[badams52]

One thing I'm thinking about is college admissions policies.

A little while ago, there was a proposition which passed that prevented California run universities from using race as a determining factor in who the universities accept. The biggest argument against this was that taking out the race factor would kill diversity in colleges and universities.

I believe Michigan recently had one such law going to the supreme court.

Is the idea of having diversity a big enough deterent to eliminating the race category from State forms? This also means that when one registers to vote in California, race can no longer be one of the questions asked.

I'm also curious as to whether this is a step back towards the "melting pot" idea where everyone who comes to America becomes American. I know a couple of years ago, people at Berkeley High School (I tutored there for a while) we're talking about America being a "mixed salad" and that the "melting pot" isn't a very good analogy cause people come into America with their own culture and even 2 or 3 generations later, still have some of their own culture.

If this measure does pass, it will be interesting to see in the future if this will really help the minorities integrate into the common culture and not be discriminated against.

Forgive me for my broad generalization here, but my feeling is that it will help those minority cultures who embrace the American ideal of hard work/college education = success achieve having the higher paying jobs (many Asian cultures) while hurting those that don't pursue education as diligently (African America and some Latino/Spanish cultures).

Of course, whether this is right or wrong is a whole other question all together.

[Dinner]

I'm voting for it and unlike most of the people here I can actually vote in California.

[mrmitchell]

[Chemical Ollie]

Only a Nazi government would keep record of the citizens' race.

Remember the stamp in the passport: JUDE

[Nubclear]

The record-keeping of race is useful in the study of psychology.

Oh well. At least I always have the other states

[Dis]

I support this. It's time we look past race (and yes that includes special treatment of minorities)

[GePap]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
If "civil rights commitments" mean numerical quotas for everything, then you've got a point. I mean, how can we assure equality under the law without simplistic labels to segregate everyone under.

The way you meet civil rights commitments is to examine complaints and issues on their specific merits, rather than hiding behind statistics and quotas that are near meaningless anyway.

Unless you want to go back to legal standards defining who's white and who's colored, and putting that data on their birth records.

Please. If there was no substintial difference in incarceration rates, rates at which individual get the DP, rates of poverty, lack of access to government resources and so forth between individual of different races, I might give this a thought. BUt those differences do exist. So spare me the bull.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by GePap


Please. If there was no substintial difference in incarceration rates, rates at which individual get the DP, rates of poverty, lack of access to government resources and so forth between individual of different races, I might give this a thought. BUt those differences do exist. So spare me the bull.

Since we're talking about a California initiative, perhaps you could point out which of those problems have been shown to apply extensively to California, studies that have shown that those problems in California, to the extent they exist, are rooted in some systematic and fundamental denial of civil rights, and why statistic gathering rather than responding individually or on a class action basis is a more effective method for addressing any such problems. Until you come up with specific relevant to California, spare me the New York one-size-fits-all liberal bull.