Why Business Can’t Support 209

Proposition 209 on the Nov. 5 ballot, the “California civil rights initiative,” reads like an equal opportunity fairy tale. Its supporters speak of colorblind individualism and oppose public sector “preferences” of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. Underlying these noble thoughts, however, is an ideological bias against these very ideas.

Proposition 209 assumes that critical aspects of affirmative action, characterized as “preferences,” mean quotas for employment, education and contracting opportunities. Nothing could be further from the truth. Public quotas are illegal and wrong and any semblance of such should be corrected.

California’s corporate community, central to any state campaign, has been reluctant to embrace Proposition 209. The reason is simple. When stripped of its false quota premise, the proposition would ban practical integration efforts aimed at women and minorities. The result would be an all-or-nothing public policy that would undermine the way that corporations make use of their affirmative action programs. By prohibiting use of those business programs and practices in the public sector, Proposition 209 would cast a dark shadow over collaborative work in such areas as economic development and education.

The corporate community, for example, relies on public higher education to diversify its work force and better market its products. To remain profitable, businesses must take account of ethnic, racial and gender factors to enhance employment pools, services and products--this is because California has become a nonwhite market composed of women as well as men. These factors, or “preferences,” are everywhere: bilingual bank teller machines, and cultural, gender and racial distinctions depicted in billboard advertising, featured on TV or the objects of telemarketing.

Obsessed with colorblind notions, Proposition 209 supporters urge a one-size-fits-all policy in place of these practical factors. They would evade the realities of a diverse California by inefficiently expanding limited public education resources to all social segments for “natural integration.” Yet in a society that uses race, gender and ethnicity in corporate marketing and recruitment, is it wrong to use these factors for public integration and equal opportunity? Should voters support a state proposition that would prohibit public institutions like the University of California from specifically reaching out to an excluded body of people or a segregated community?

This is why Proposition 209 has failed to garner corporate support and why last year’s UC regents decision on affirmative action was opposed by the university’s president, campus chancellors and faculty. As a regent, I opposed the decision and predicted that the number of underrepresented minorities at UC campuses would drop dramatically. This week, a study commissioned by the university confirmed that minority enrollment at UCLA and UC Berkeley could drop 50% to 70% once the rollback of affirmative action takes effect--while white and Asian American enrollment would grow.

As our economy enters a knowledge-based era in which collaboration, education and diversity are critical to success, there is growing concern that Proposition 209 will create a “separate but equal” public sector that locks out a major portion of California’s population. Many legal scholars believe that Proposition 209 also contains a clause justifying existing gender discrimination, leaving women’s potential to the whim of stereotype.

The reality is that we live in a world in which relationships, connections and, yes, preferences, matter in providing opportunity. Informal procedures, segregated relationships and cultural biases too often determine these opportunities. In effect, the passage of Proposition 209 is an open invitation to make government an arbiter for a private morality determined by those who currently rule the roost.

The bottom line is this: Self-interest need be the only guide for California’s corporate community in examining Proposition 209’s potential effects.

Many of us remember how Branch Rickey broke major league baseball’s race barrier when he persuaded a courageous black young man named Jackie Robinson to join the Brooklyn Dodgers. At one point in their negotiations, Robinson poignantly asked: “Mr. Rickey, why are you doing this?” “Mr. Robinson,” answered Rickey, “I just want to win me some ball games.”

As a young Bank of America executive more than 10 years ago, I observed senior management’s opposition to bilingual teller machines because of an “English-only” political climate. The bank’s policy changed as a matter of business necessity, in order to break the language barrier. This fallen blockade symbolizes a forgotten time in our history when Amadeo Giannini, a young Italian immigrant, founded a bank to cater to California’s redlined ethnic communities by establishing bilingual bank branches. Giannini’s Bank of Italy eventually became the nation’s largest financial institution, known around the world as--you guessed it--the Bank of America.

If Proposition 209 passes, it is unlikely that similar barriers--racial, ethnic, gender, cultural--will continue to be lowered in California’s public world and in the private sector affected by it.