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NEWS & LETTERS, July 2002
Black/Red View column by John Alan
“Racial privacy” fraudLast April in California, Ward Connerly, a well known
African-American ultraconservative who is also a member of the board of advisors
of the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, filed almost a million signatures with the
California secretary of state to qualify the so-called "Racial Privacy
Initiative" for the ballot. Some have speculated that Connerly's initiative might go
on the California ballot this coming November or in spring 2003. There is still
time to make a critical examination of Connerly's concept of "racial
privacy," including the source of the large amount of money used to gather
signatures to put his initiative on the ballot. CONNERLY'S RIGHT-WING PAST Ward Connerly has long been engaged in right-wing
politics. He has not been connected—in practice or in theory—with struggles
against racism. In 1993 California's Governor Pete Wilson recognized a use for
Connerly's reactionary politics and appointed him to the University of
California's Board of Regents and together they brought about the repeal of
affirmative action at the University of Calfornia. However it is only Ward
Connerly and not Wilson who is remembered as the father of Proposition 209 which
outlawed, in 1996, affirmative action in state hiring and contracting and in
college admission policy. If we review Wilson's political reasons for ending
affirmative action we find they are thin and fraudulent. Ward Connerly's
ideological reasons are also thin and fraudulent, but they have an appearance of
being the truth since they come out of the mouth of a successful
African-American middle-class personality. Of course, Ward Connerly was either totally ignorant of
the long history of the African-American freedom struggles in this country or
was just hyping wealthy white conservatism by maintaining that affirmative
action, by giving preferences to race, gender and ethnic groups, was depriving
people of individual liberty. Connerly carried this idea to an absurdity when he said
in a lecture he gave at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library: "President
Reagan was not known as a champion of civil rights in the traditional sense of
the term. In fact, he has often been accused of being 'anti-civil rights' by the
traditional civil rights establishment. But in the fullness of time, we shall
see that his accusers were wrong. They are the ones who fail to understand that
'civil rights' are individual rights that attach to every individual, not to a
group." 'COLOR BLIND' POLICE STATE? When Connerly emphasizes Reagan's deep concern for
"individual rights" and places it above civil rights, he is saying
that Reagan believes that when individuals compete in a marketplace for their
livelihood, it is true freedom. This is nothing less than capitalism's old
concept that the marketplace is the true realm of freedom. African-American
masses in motion, such as in the Civil Rights Movement, have always opposed the
oppressive racism in the market, beginning with the creation of the first world
market with the Atlantic slave trade. Six years after he played a major role in destroying
affirmative action in California with his infamous Proposition 209, Ward
Connerly has emerged from the deep cave of Reagan's retrogression with millions
of dollars and a "Racial Privacy Initiative" to stop the government
from collecting data on race. This, he claims, will be the first step toward
creating a "color blind society." At first glance, Connerly's initiative appears as a plan
to protect people from big government. However we find that Connerly's
initiative specifically allows the police to collect racial data. This could end
with police being the sole collector of data on race. And then it imposes a ban
on releasing to the public all collected data on race. Thus, the essential
purpose of Connerly's "Racial Privacy Initiative" is to cover up
racism, that is, see no evil and hear no evil and call it a "color blind
society." A POLITICAL TROJAN HORSE If Connerly's Racial Privacy Initiative is enacted, it
will become a serious impediment to African-American civil rights in California.
If all data regarding racial disparities were hidden away, this would slow down
opposition to racism and eviscerate essential enforcement of civil rights laws.
For example, the recent moratorium on the death penalty in Maryland is based on
racial disparities in the death sentence (See June 2002 NEWS & LETTERS). In this respect, the Racial Privacy Initiative is a political Trojan Horse, financed by fat cat Reagan conservatives and brought into politics by Ward Connerly. Pre-judging African Americans according to their group cannot be willed away with a false ideology of the isolated individual. The continuing struggle of African Americans to overcome capitalism's racist barriers to the full self-development of the social individual also cannot be willed away. A victory of the "Racial Privacy Initiative" will not end the struggle against American racism. As always, it will go on ceaselessly until it absolutely uproots American civilization. |
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