From the moment the so-called California Civil Rights Initiative was drafted, the smart money went with the ballot question that would prohibit the state from favoring members of one sex or racial group over another. And even though, on the eve of balloting, the polls said the smart money was right, they also said that Californians were far more divided than previously thought. During the period leading up to the vote–particularly during the past few weeks–Californians pondered the post-affirmative-action world and many concluded they were in no rush to bring it about.
A Field poll released the second week of October showed that support among likely voters had dropped, in one year, from 58 percent to 47 percent. Over the next two weeks, the gap narrowed to a few percentage points, leading some within the Prop 209 opposition camp to cautiously–prayerfully–predict victory. If the anti-209 forces could ““deracialize’’ the issue, and get the public to see that white women–not blacks–were affirmative action’s primary beneficiaries, support for the measure might collapse, said the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
But support faded only so far. And the debate was never ““deracialized.’’ It remained, in large part, defined by the fear that ““Willie Horton wants your job. He wants your son’s place in college,’’ said Constance Rice, of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. In the weeks leading up to the vote, both sides cranked out ad campaigns designed to stir emotions. Opponents wrapped Prop 209 advocates in the sheets of the Ku Klux Klan, focusing on former Klansman David Duke’s visit to California to champion the measure. Meanwhile, Prop 209 supporters cloaked themselves in the words of Martin Luther King Jr.–a tactic that infuriated King’s widow. The Republican Party responded by dropping King’s ““I have a dream’’ speech from its ads, even as pollster Mervin Field wondered aloud whether the party and its presidential candidate (who stumped for the proposition) had erred in making Prop 209 a partisan issue.
Most California politicians, acutely aware of affirmative action’s divisive potential, were always skittish about the proposition. With the conspicuous exception of Gov. Pete Wilson, they treated it as gingerly as they might a goblet of sulfuric acid. The timidity was based not just on fear of conflict and controversy, but on the awareness that voters are extremely ambivalent about affirmative action.
Although most Americans believe that affirmative action has not worked well, they do not necessarily think that dynamiting all such programs constitutes a solution. Nor are they eager to act precipitously. It is one thing, for instance, to admit a black or Chicano kid with lower scores to a university while rejecting a white kid with more credentials. It is quite another to help the minority kid master material so he or she can get a better grade. Civil-rights lawyers fear that Prop 209 could render many programs targeting underprivileged minorities (or women) illegal.
The proposition’s supporters say that may just be too bad, that a simple and rigid nondiscrimination policy is what Americans need–even though such a policy may end certain remediation programs and would almost certainly cut minority enrollment at prestigious universities. Guaranteeing ““a handful of blacks and Chicanos even though they are not competitive’’ the opportunity to go to such schools as U.C. Berkeley does not justify racial preferences, argued Ward Connerly, chairman of the Prop 209 campaign. Such practices, in his view, amount to applying a Band-Aid to a serious problem. Fair enough. But there is nothing in Prop 209 that would address the larger problem of academic unpreparedness. Indeed, there is no sign that its proponents have any idea of how to create the array of opportunities in any area that would truly make affirmative action irrelevant. Yet that issue will have to be faced not only in California, but in other states that will inevitably consider putting affirmative action to the vote.
Antonia Hernandez, head of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, is correct when she says that in its early days, affirmative action was not adequately debated. She is equally right to be upset that the debate now ““is being held as an afterthought.’’ Indeed, with its charges of Klan involvement and reverse racism, the campaign in California left precious little room for reasoned debate or dialogue. Yet, even as the Prop 209 battle recedes, it is just such dialogue that must take place. That dialogue would forthrightly admit the shortcomings of affirmative action even as it acknowledges that a so-called race-blind society, which remains a lot whiter on the top than at the bottom, carries the seeds of its own ruination.
