Racial Data Measure Attacked

Gov. Gray Davis on Tuesday announced his opposition to a proposition on the March ballot that would prohibit government agencies and schools in California from collecting most kinds of racial and ethnic information.

The governor called the proposed Racial Privacy Initiative by UC Regent Ward Connerly “divisive, bad policy and a big step backward” for the state.

Flanked by members of the Greenlining Institute, executives who fight for equal treatment of minorities, Davis said outlawing the classification of Californians on the basis of race, ethnicity, color or national origin would hand a setback to accountability in the schools and to medical research.

Connerly, a supporter of Proposition 209, which abolished affirmative action policies and practices in the 1990s, argues that collecting racial and ethnic data perpetuates segregation of minorities by dividing, cataloging and subdividing them. He has said his plan would help make California a colorblind state.

The ballot initiative would forbid state and local entities, schools and public universities to classify individuals on the basis of race or ethnicity, with some exceptions, including lawful medical research and law enforcement purposes.

Davis, who is the target of a likely recall election, said collection of racial data was essential for keeping schools accountable for their performance and for research into such issues as why certain diseases strike certain minority communities disproportionately.

In the schools, the governor said: “We need to know who is dropping out and why ... who is truant and why.”

He said prohibiting use of racial classifications would cripple efforts by the state Department of Health Services to track the adverse affects of illnesses on various minority communities. He warned that the initiative also would adversely affect California’s growing biomedical industry.

But Connerly lashed out at Davis, charging that the governor joined the fight to build support among the black and Latino constituencies against his own threatened recall.