InBiz Blog

The Winter 2008 issue of Ms magazine has three articles related to the attempts to severely restrict affirmative action programs through ballot measures in five states this November. I hope you check out the articles in Ms., which will later become available online. An organizational colleague, Monique Morris of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at UC Berkeley School of Law, is featured prominently, highlighting the research that the Henderson Center completed last fall.

We also are working to share our research on the impact of Proposition 209 in California and Initiative 200 in Washington with public agencies and advocates in Missouri, Colorado, Arizona, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, the five states targeted by the ballot measure proponents. One colleague in one of the states recently assessed that it will take a major organizing and communications effort to counter the ballot measure proponents since there is so much misinformation out there already.

I have recently seen a number of OpEds from conservatives such as George Will blasting affirmative action and stating that the results of the five ballot initiatives would be more important than the Presidential elections. In fact, he said, the candidacies of Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton prove that affirmative action is no longer necessary. Will’s logic is flawed. The example of a few gifted people to reach national prominence does not negate the persistent barriers that most people of color and most women still face in many public and private arenas. As we emphasized in our December 2007 state policy report, “state governments [and other public agencies] create affirmative procurement programs in order to remove barriers to state contracts faced by minority- or women-owned businesses, barriers that white male-owned businesses usually do not face and large corporations almost never face.”

Unfortunately, it is harder to get the message out if you are not George Will. For example, how well known is it that procurement in Washington from minority business enterprises (MBEs) and women business enterprises (WBEs) fell precipitously after the passage of Initiative 200? State procurement from MBEs had been 5.7% of total state discretionary spending in the two years prior to Initiative 200, while WBE procurement had been 5.2%. Due to the ballot measure, these rates fell dramatically for six consecutive years, until by 2004 they reached an abysmal 0.7% for MBEs and 1.0% for WBEs. The barriers to state procurement for MBEs and WBEs are very real. Washington has realized that there is a problem and to its credit is slowly turning those numbers around with a voluntary supplier diversity program. However, because the state can not use race or gender as a consideration when determining contracts or sub-contracts, the state may never be able to totally overcome the barriers faced by MBEs and WBEs.

A recent LA Times article quotes Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, “We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.” Sadly, the continuing evidence from around the country suggests that 25 years from today another Justice could be making a similar quote.