The right wing conspiracy may not be vast, but it sure isn’t united. Ward Connerly, who has led the charge in California and elsewhere for colorblindness, and his long-time ally, Tom Wood, who authored California’s Proposition 209 outlawing racial discrimination, have fallen out over Connerly’s Racial Privacy Initiative.
See this article in the UCLA Daily Bruin for a good summary of their differences. Briefly (very briefly, so read the article), Connerly thinks colorblindness requires, well, colorblindness while Wood thinks colorblindness can’t be monitored and enforced without racial data.
This debate bears watching as it will no doubt heat up.
I have heard the left refer to the right as a ‘machine’. If only it were so…
Our small disagreements are always getting in our way.
Disagreements are healthy because they keep us from getting off-track. This one will be worked out, hopefully the best way.
I understand Connerly’s desire to leave racial distinctions behind, and he may be right about that being the only way to leave institutional racism behind. At the same time, I’m nervous about dropping the ability to measure the racial impact of any future policies. If only we could collect the data and assure that it would only be used for after-the-fact statistical analysis.
Sorry, Laura, but the “racial impact” of future policies ought to be as off-limits as “preferences” are now. Otherwise, we’ll just have all of AA sneaking back in under the guise of “racial impact”. Instead, what we need to do is to vigorously root out actual, provable cases of genuine racial discrimination by state actors–in other words, those cases when the state fails to treat an individual on their own merits.
Kirk, I say this because I’m convinced that the demise of AA will lead to better outcomes for minorities in the long run. If we stop collecting data we won’t be able to demonstrate that. I’d never support stopping the data collection if I thought the result would be sweeping the problems under the rug.
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