Dramatic New Poll: Minorities Support Prop. 54!

According to a recent article in the San Jose Mercury News, Ward Connerly’s Proposition 54, the racial privacy initiative, is supported by more minorities than oppose it.

Next month’s state ballot measure to prohibit the government’s collection of race-based data — which opponents claim would be detrimental to minorities — shows surprisingly strong support from Latinos, Asian-Americans and blacks, according to a multiethnic poll released Thursday.

….

The poll, commissioned by four education and non-profit organizations, found that 46 percent of Latinos, 42 percent of Asian-Americans and 41 percent of African-Americans support the proposition — while just 31 percent of whites favor it. The measure is opposed by a third of Latinos, 40 percent of Asian-Americans, 33 percent of blacks and a quarter of whites.

Fascinating numbers, even with the large number of (presumably) still undecided voters.

Here’s a funny thought: what if, hypothetically, further polling revealed that a substantial number, maybe even a large majority, of the 25% of the whites in this poll who oppose Prop. 54 do so not because they want to preserve affirmative action, etc., but rather because they don’t really believe minorities deserve equal rights? That is, what if they would like to preserve offiicial data about how many blacks are moving into which neighborhoods, schools, etc., so they could avoid them?

Here’s another thought, not so funny because I’m convinced that, unlike the above hypothetical, it’s true: liberals abandoned the fundamental principle on which the demand for civil rights was traditionally based when they replaced a committment to color-blindness with racial preferences. Polling data consistently demonstrates, however, that large majorities of Americans continue to believe that the “without regard” principle — the principle that all individuals have a right to be treated without regard to race, creed, or national origin — is a fundamental, core American value.

In my opinion (what else did you expect to find here?), if Prop. 54 is to be defeated its opponents must convince voters over the next 10 days that it is necessary to continue collecting racial data in order to ensure that benefits and burdens are not distributed on the basis of race. That is a hard (though not impossible) argument to make on its face, but it is made harder by the fact that the most visible and vocal opponents of Prop. 54 are the very folks who are on record demanding that race should be taken into account.

UPDATE – An article in Sunday’s Sacramento Bee reveals the glaring inconsistencies in what “racial” data is collected. (Via Howard Bashman).

Halle Berry, the daughter of a Caucasian mother and an African American father, would be counted as mixed race by the U.S. census.

But the Oscar-winning actress would be counted as African American at the University of California.

And if she applied to California State University, Berry would have to choose between the two races or be listed as “declined to state.”

Proposition 54 on the Oct. 7 ballot is fueled, in part, by a policy mishmash in which agencies can’t seem to agree on what needs to be tracked — or how.

Californians are asked their race for birth and death certificates, but not for marriage; for home loans, but not credit cards or most business loans.

“Opponents concede that discrepancies exist in gathering data,” the ariticle notes, “but they claim Proposition 54 would eliminate statistics vitally needed to protect civil rights and fight discrimination.”

As I argued above, however, perhaps the biggest “discrepancies” do not derive from confusion over what race is (or where it — whatever it is — is relevant) but from disagreements over what civil rights and discrimination are. Because “civil rights” has come to be equated with racial preference, allowing the state to continue collecting racial data in the name of protecting civil rights strikes more and more people as akin to allowing foxes to collect demographic data on chicken coops in order to protect the chickens.