Imagine looking for information on the amount of whites compared to Latinos in higher education. However, the government has created a roadblock; this information is classified. There is no way around it, because Proposition 54 prohibits collecting data based on race.
Proposition 54 is a project of Ward Connerly, the chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, who was the ringleader in opposing affirmative action in California. His efforts to ban affirmative action failed, so another sad attempt to make everyone colorblind is an initiative to prohibit state and local governments from classifying any person by race, ethnicity, color or national origin.
Yet, this same initiative allows for race to be considered in the areas of law enforcement, the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, and subjects of medical research.
This initiative does not need to be passed.
Citizens and the government alike need information based on race, whether it is education, health or heritage. If this information ceases to be collected, but information on inmates by race continues then the result is racial injustice.
This is the very thing that Connerly, who happens to be of African, Irish, French Canadian and Choctaw Indian descent, is trying to prevent.
According to www.racialprivacy.org, Connerly said the initiative, “diminishes the identity politics that have come to define how we live our lives.”
Connerly has put on a facade pretending to be colorblind and want everyone else to do the same. Yet, Proposition 54 would blatantly allow the continuance of racial profiling and racial injustice.
If this lunacy passes, pertinent information will not be available to the public. And if California, being seen as one of the leading states, passes this absurd madness, it’s likely other states will follow.
Americans must realize identity politics do not define our lives. By voting, Americans dictate how they live.
Robyn K. Mizelle for The Famuan.