Chronicle of Higher Education - web daily - October 8, 2003
Californians Reject Ballot Measure That Would Ban Racial Data
By SARA HEBEL
California voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure that would have barred public colleges and other state entities from collecting and using most racial and ethnic data.
The initiative, known as Proposition 54, appeared on the same ballot as the question of whether to recall Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, and the slate of candidates to replace him.
With 94 percent of precincts reporting results early this morning, Proposition 54 was losing, 64 percent to 36 percent. In the recall election, voters were approving the removal of Governor Davis, 54 percent to 46 percent. The leading candidate to succeed him, and the state's next governor, is Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Austrian-born actor and Republican, who was drawing 48 percent of the vote. Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a Democrat, had a distant 33 percent of the vote.
Proponents of the ballot measure argued that it would have helped to end what they believe is the government's divisive and largely useless practice of classifying people by race and ethnicity. In a 1996 referendum, California voters banned racial preferences in public-college admissions and other areas, and supporters of Proposition 54 said that it would have brought the state closer to the goal of putting people of all backgrounds on an equal footing.
But many higher-education officials, faculty members, and students said that the measure would have curtailed important academic research and would have limited colleges' ability to assess and improve programs to help students. In order to achieve equal access to higher education, opponents of the proposition said, colleges and states need to track and monitor disparities among different groups.
The ban on data collection would have taken effect on January 1, 2005. Under the measure, state and local governments would not have been allowed to collect or use information about a person's race, ethnicity, color, or national origin in areas of public education, contracting, employment, and other government operations.
Information that federal law requires to be collected, such as the race of students enrolled at public colleges, would have been exempt from the restrictions. But college officials said they were unsure whether the measure would have prevented them from using such data for their own analysis, beyond what they must report to the federal government.
Data that federal law does not require to be reported, and that colleges would have been prohibited from collecting or using, include racial and ethnic information about college applicants, people who take the state's teacher-credentials tests, and participants in outreach programs to elementary and secondary schools and in the state's loan-forgiveness program.
The ballot proposal also included an exemption for data "related to medical-research subjects and patients." Many higher-education officials, who interpreted "subjects" to mean research volunteers, said public-health studies were vulnerable under the initiative because research often relies on racial statistics from sources that could have been banned by Proposition 54. Those sources include public-health surveys, birth and death certificates, disease-specific registries, and state collections of population statistics.
But proponents of the proposition said that the term "subjects" referred generally to medical topics and that all public-health information would still have been open to researchers. The medical exemption, the supporters said, was virtually unlimited.
The leading supporter of Proposition 54 was Ward Connerly, the University of California regent who successfully promoted ballot measures in California and Washington to ban affirmative action in public-college admissions. Even before the votes were in, he indicated that he would try to bring up a similar proposition in two or three years if the measure failed.
Mr. Connerly argued that the government's classification of people by race is immoral and creates arbitrary distinctions among individuals. That, he said, makes data used to analyze trends by people's backgrounds inaccurate. Many college students are of mixed backgrounds, which are not fully reflected when a person checks a single box on a college application to indicate race or ethnicity. Mr. Connerly himself is often tagged as black, his allies note, even though he is also of American Indian and Irish heritage.
In addition, he argued, reporting of race and ethnicity is often optional, so databases are incomplete. For instance, Mr. Connerly noted that 8.4 percent of applicants to the University of California system in the fall of 2003 declined to state their racial or ethnic backgrounds.
Meanwhile, the governing boards of all three of California's public-college systems -- the University of California, California State University, and California Community Colleges -- have come out against Proposition 54.
Academic associations and advocacy groups that represent minority populations also spoke out against the ballot measure. The American Sociological Association last year said that government agencies and academic researchers need to continue to collect data on race and ethnicity to be able to respond to discrimination and stratification in education, housing, and health.
Groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund said racial data is needed to make sure underrepresented minority residents have access to equal opportunities.
Some opponents of affirmative action also criticized Proposition 54. They said that watchdog groups need to monitor how public colleges use race, to make sure they are not giving illegal advantages to minority students.