Tilting at Windmills

by Gary Phillips

In his landmark 1942 book, Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race, anthropologist Ashley Montagu argued that race was a specious concept, a social construct and not a legitimate demarcation among human beings. Montagu's works were cited by the plaintiffs in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case before the U.S. Supreme Court that invalidated racial segregation in public schools.

Today, Montagu's ideas are being bandied back and forth by both sides looking to bolster their positions along the color line. The most recent manifestation of this can be seen in the debate over Proposition 54, the Racial Privacy Initiative (officially called the Classification by Race, Ethnicity, Color or National Origin) on the ballot this October in California.

Supporters of Proposition 54 insist that racism has been virtually eliminated in our country. These forces contend that only race hucksters and fuzzy-headed liberals bring up race issues for their own self-interests, and are miring our society in useless dogma. RPI -- which would prohibit any government agency in California from collecting data by race, ethnicity, color or national origin and using it to classify those involved in public education, public contracting or public employment - its supporters claim, will be the first step towards a colorblind society. Like religion, marital status or sexual orientation the proponents argue, race should become a private matter.

But one's marital status, religion and sexual orientation may not be readily apparent when people first encounter you. But what you look like and how you sound is apparent. And those physical and cultural indicators do have consequences. These effects are sharply delineated in the areas of housing and employment.

As reported in the L.A. Times' "Mi Casa No Es Su Casa" (November 21, 2001), illegal discrimination in Southern California was detected by testers at 13 of 20 apartment buildings in Panorama City and North Hills, a predominantly Latino area of the San Fernando Valley. That number was 12 of 40 buildings in Koreatown, and 13 of 25 in South Central. One African American tester quit in frustration, the article by Sue Fox went on, because she felt the problem was so widespread, fair housing groups would never conquer it. And bear in mind that a lot of the incidents were not the old paradigm of black renters versus white managers, but indicators of discrimination across a broad spectrum of ethnicities, and even intra-ethnic discrimination.

RPI, while having no effect on gathering housing discrimination numbers initially, has in its clause (e) the provision that ten years after its passage the Department of Fair Housing and Employment would be forbidden from compiling or utilizing such data.

Stanford University linguistics professor John Baugh did a study on "talking while black," which documented a listener's response to specific voices over the phone. For instance African Americans who called about rental units or a job opening were told the units or openings were no longer available. But when a white person called later, suddenly that job opening or unit was still available. Utilization of this kind of data by a public agency looking at job discrimination would be prohibited.

RPI also has a clause (b) that prohibits the use of such classifications in the operation of any other state operations. California has various local and state laws prohibiting racial discrimination in the private sector, and if that data can't be collected by the state, then those laws become worthless promises.

If RPI passes, measuring racial and ethnic disparity in hate crimes, insurance redlining, economic trends, and health care delivery would also be impeded. Data tracking has informed us that infant mortality rates and percent birth weight of infants of black/African American women is the highest of all racial groups; white women have the highest breast cancer incidence rates of all women, and Asian/Pacific Islanders have the highest tuberculosis rates of any other racial group. No one single health campaign reaches all people. Tailoring outreach and prevention efforts to specific communities has helped in educating the populace on issues such as HIV/AIDS, prenatal care, and immunization.

Professor Clifford Rechtschaffen of Golden Gate University School of Law wrote that some of the most important demographic data needed by health professionals, as well as educators, environmental researchers and others, comes from the state departments of Finance and Health Services and county health departments. Key data gathered by these agencies would disappear if RPI passed.

Ultimately, RPI will not help prevent discrimination. What this initiative will do is make truth harder to come by, and impede needed remedies. In many ways, that's the metaphor for the colorblind crowd. They profess in the spirit of Montagu they are merely extolling a society where the color of one's skin or texture of hair is genetically and culturally insignificant. But unlike Montagu, their proposed solutions cause more hardship. They offer nothing to those who must deal with a reality many face each day - a reality where race, societal construct or no, is still a palpable force.

The colorblindistas are tilting at windmills and spinning wrong-headed notions in their lofty towers. Californians want an inclusive society not a blind one. Data and information are part of the tools needed to construct programs and policies to eradicate such problems. A ban on fact gathering will only propagate fallacies and falsehoods.

A slightly different version of this OpEd ran in the Monday, August 18, 2003 edition of theDaily Journal under the title, "Initiative on Racial Privacy will Thwart Bias Remedies."

Gary Phillips is the communications director of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.

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