Supervisors Vote to Oppose Proposition 209

Drawing on its members’ personal experience, a politically divided Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to oppose a state ballot measure that would abolish government-sponsored affirmative action programs for racial minorities and women.

In pushing hard for a strong stand against Proposition 209, Supervisors Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Gloria Molina, one African American and one Latina, spoke of their struggles to advance despite barriers placed in their path because of their race.

But the backers of the initiative argued that preferential treatment for racial minorities and women amounts to discrimination against others. They said such programs are fundamentally inconsistent with the principle of equal opportunity in hiring, promotions and admission to colleges and universities.

For more than two hours, both sides sent representatives to the microphone--black, white, Asian and Latino--to argue poignantly deep philosophical differences in their approach to the emotional issue of affirmative action.

A passionate Burke took aim at the measure’s supporters--who have dubbed it the “California civil rights initiative”--saying it would turn back the clock on affirmative action programs. “What [they] are saying is now that it has started to open up, let’s close it down. Let’s eliminate all the affirmative action,” Burke said.

“There are a whole lot of us,” Burke continued, “who worked very hard and fought hard in the courts, on the streets and everywhere else, to bring opportunities to women and minorities and to all of those people who now are getting a break.”

Molina recalled that it took a civil rights case argued all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to force the then all-male Board of Supervisors to stop drawing district boundaries that discriminated against Latinos. Without that victory, Molina said, she would not be on the board today. “We have a long way to go before we right all the wrongs in our system,” Molina said, adding that she wishes her daughter were “going to face a colorblind society, but she is not.”

There were sharp differences offered on how to achieve that objective.

University of California Regent Ward Connerly, who has been a leader in the effort to abolish racial preferences in admissions to the university, said that “using race for the benevolent purpose of achieving diversity . . . is still discrimination.”

Connerly, who is black, said the county’s affirmative action efforts require that hiring be based on race or ethnicity rather than merit.

“You have an ordinance, called the ‘Population Parity Ordinance,’ which is as close to being a quota system as any law in America,” he said.

But rather than eliminating such goals, said John Hill, the county’s affirmative action officer, more work needs to be done to ensure that all Californians have access and participate equally in employment, public education and business contracting opportunities.

Hill said Los Angeles County is one of the most racially and ethnically diverse places in the world and the county’s work force must reflect that reality.

Speaker after speaker had stories of their own to tell. There were women and minorities who started their own businesses and survived in part with government contracts set aside for such enterprises. “People need access to equal opportunity,” said Rose Ramirez Girard, who opened her own construction company. “Without affirmative action I never would have been able to get my foot in the door.”

On the other hand, there was a Santa Ana attorney, Kenneth A. Wong, who said he and his parents were able to achieve success by working hard without any preferential treatment. His parents “did not ask for [and] did not expect any special privilege or preference,” he said.

There was state Sen. Quentin L. Kopp (I-San Francisco), arguing as a Jewish man that the 1964 Civil Rights Act did not contemplate affirmative action. “Preferences or favoritism on account of race or gender is discrimination against someone,” Kopp said. “It is inescapable.”

But Rabbi Lee T. Bycel, president of the county’s Human Relations Commission, took issue with Kopp. “Look at this county and look at this society,” he said. “‘Do we live in a world that is colorblind?”

Board Chairman Mike Antonovich, an early backer of the initiative, said the measure would eliminate the discriminatory practice of quotas. Instead, he said, the state and county would have to undertake aggressive outreach programs regardless of race, color or creed.

Quoting a state Supreme Court justice, Antonovich said, “Whenever you quota someone in, you quota someone out.”

The board’s other Republican, retiring Supervisor Deane Dana, declined to take a position on the issue, saying it is up to the voters to decide. The supervisors’ vote was split along party lines, with the three Democrats--Burke, Molina and Zev Yaroslavsky--opposing Proposition 209.

Yaroslavsky admitted that he was not an early supporter of affirmative action but said: “The fact of the matter is that qualified people have been denied access to employment and education because of an old-boys system that has existed for a long time.”

Yaroslavsky said people in Los Angeles must learn to live with diversity. “If we don’t learn to live with it, to live together, to manage the diversity in a very positive way, it’s going to devour all of us.”