Mercury News, Aug. 6
Groups vow to defeat initiative banning racial data collection
letters@mercurynews.com
I notice that Kaiser Permanente is joining the misguided group ganging up defeat Proposition 54 and keep invading our privacy with “race” questions. Even though Proposition 54 will in no way affect patients and health care, Kaiser Permanente doesn’t appear to be concerned with the truth. Since Kaiser is so concerned with “race,” how does it define a patient’s “race”? Self-identification or eyeballing by an employee? Not very scientific, is it? I think Kaiser Permanente’s patients would rather that their health care provider spend its money giving individual care to each patient instead of wasting time and money trying to force them into bureaucratically defined “racial” categories.
LA Times, Aug 8
Rally Targets Ballot Measure
letters@latimes.com
Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Los Angeles, piously whines that Proposition 54, otherwise known as the “Racial Privacy Initiative,” should be opposed because it “will not end racial discrimination.” In the late 1950s, the ACLU fought to keep a “religion” question off the U.S. Census because they claimed that it was a dangerous invasion of privacy for the government to inquire about the religious affiliations of its citizens. What is the difference between religion and race here? Religious discrimination still exists but it is nowhere as common as it used to be, especially anti-Semitism. Could the fact that we don’t categorize people by religious background have something to do with it? Proposition 54 would begin the process of reducing the importance of “race” in public life. The government doesn’t tell you whether or not you’re Greek or German, Irish or Armenian, Jewish or Catholic. That’s your call. “Race” should be treated the same way.
Asian Week, Aug. 8
asianweek@asianweek.com
Thanks to Sam Chu Lin for his honest and insightful interview with Ward Connerly regarding Proposition 54, also known as the “Racial Privacy Initiative.”
Unfortunately, that issue of Asian Week was marred by the idiotic, racialist ravings of Emil Guillermo, who assures us that we will all drop dead if Proposition 54 passes. Even though Proposition 54 excludes health care data, we should seriously question the need for health care organizations to force their patients into broad, unscientific, bureaucratically defined “racial” categories. If your doctor can’t treat you as an individual, rather than as a representative of a “race,” change doctors. Emil Guillermo may want to be treated as a “racial” statistic, but most of us don’t.
Thanks so much for your column in support of Ward Connerly’s Racial Privacy Initiative, now Proposition 54.
As a member of the ACLU for many years, I have been especially disappointed in their almost fanatical devotion to ELIMINATING racial privacy. Is this the organization that helped to overturn the anti-miscegenation laws in Loving v. Virginia? Would they do so today?
I read that, back in the late 50’s, the ACLU fought to keep the government from adding a “religion” question to the Census, saying that it was a dangerous invasion of privacy and could be used for malevolent purposes in the future. Are they now saying that the government that can’t be trusted to accumulate data on citizens’ religious affiliations can be totally trusted to accumulate data on our ancestry and racial backgrounds?
Thank you for your article on Ward Connerly’s fight to get the government out of the race business.
No doubt you will hear from others who claim that without the little boxes, there will be no way to track and prosecute racial discrimination. If so, how are religious discrimination cases now documented? The government does not require us to declare our religious affiliation.
I have also wondered if it wasn’t race data that allowed voters to be excluded from voting rolls during the 2000 Presidential election. Florida voter rolls do indicate race. When the governmenthas race data, they can use it for citizens (to track discrimination,for example) or against them. In fact, racial categories were originally set up for the purpose of discrimination. Why do we believe they now protect us from it?
One problem is that the categories we have don’t describe the individuals who have to try to squeeze themselves into the boxes. We’re serving the boxes, not the other way around. Another problem is that if we hold the belief that “all men are created equal,” why we are focussed on collecting racial data on even our youngest schoolchildren? If race doesn’t matter in our plans or expectations for the education of children, why do we ask about it? Our use of race as a primary descriptor of citizens sends the wrong message about equality.
Dr. Reeb’s op-ed on the Racial Privacy Initiative was dead-on! He is correct to assert that those opposed to the abolition of “racial” classification are truly “racialists.”
Their passion for “boxing in” their fellow Americans based on arbitrary and 17th century junk science methods of classification is no different than those in “white” supremacist circles who desparately wish to retain such classifications. By fighting to retain “racial” classifications, these individuals are sharing a blood-stained stage with David Duke, Don Black and Matt Hale.
This is truly where they belong, with those of their kind. A “racialist” is a “racialist is a “racialist”. It doesn’t matter why. Its wrong all the way around. Thank you Dr. Reeb.
In its August 5th editorial, the Dayton Daily News really let loose with some major straw man arguments.
Their claim that test scores absolutely must be segregated by “race” is just plain ridiculous. Instead of focusing on the skin color of the student, educrats should be worried about how ALL students are learning as individuals, given that tests are taken on an individual, not a group basis. Academic achievement is an individual issue. The Daily News seems to be promoting Bell Curve style junk science with this assertion.
Next the editorial goes on to promote medical paranoia by asserting that without these completely unscientific check boxes people will start keeling over en masse. This is absurd. These check boxes do not take a person’s full history into account, nor do they account for unknown “racial” ancestries. An individual may identify themselves “racially” one way, while still having multiple “racial” ancestries. As such, these boxes are completely arbitrary and subject to the prejudices and preferences of those checking the boxes. Skin color and self-identity are one thing, genetics and ancestry are quite another. To make medical decisions based on skin color classifications promulgated via 17th century junk science is what the Dayton Daily News is promoting via this editorial. This is truly disturbing and irresponsible.
The editorial next goes on to claim that the information isn’t being collected for “nefarious or silly reasons” yet this nation maintains quite a nefarious record of abuses via these offensive classifications. Census data was used to intern Americans of Japanese descent, county and state “racial” data was used for decades in Virginia and other states to target “multiracial” citizens in eugenics campaigns. Nationally, these classifications were devised solely to inflate the populations of slave holding states to ensure their domination of Congress after the Revolutionary War. This was accomplished by including slaves in the Census counts, thus adding to the numbers used to set Congressional representation in slave states, ensuring that slavery would last several more decades. I can’t think of a more offensive function of government for the Daily News to defend.
Mercury News
While Maya Harris of the ACLU of Northern California assures us we will all die unless the state is allowed to continue forcing us into bureaucratically defined “racial” categories [Letter, July 31, “Race Initiative is not what it seems”], she fails to define “race” or tell us exactly what the dividing line is between “white” and “Asian” or “white” and “black.”
Proposition 54 would exempt health care data, but the truth doesn’t stop Ms. Harris. You might ask your health care institution, however, exactly how they determine a patient’s “race.” Are you asked to self-identify or were you labeled without your knowledge by some employee? Either way, it appears that health care data on “race” are based more on politics rather than an objective, scientific criteria for defining “race.”
Los Angeles Times
In this column arguing against the elimination of the Racial Privacy Initiative (now Proposition 54), James Q. Wilson assures us that ” . . . we are not there yet” in achieving a colorblind society. I take it we are supposed to wait until Wilson and his colleagues inform us when we have finally banished racial stratification. In that case, it will never happen. Wilson admits that he and his colleagues have a vested financial and professional interest in accumulating tons of “racial” statistics [“Colorblind Versus Blindfolded, July 31].
If Wilson believes “race” is so important, why does he ignore the fact that “Hispanic” is not a “racial” category but a means of bypassing the “race” question altogether? If skin color is all-important, why doesn’t Wilson have anything to say against the fact the many “racial preferences” are given to fair-skinned Caucasians of only partial minority ancestry? The fact is that his precious “racial” categories don’t make sense, and his data can only be called fatally flawed.
San Francisco Chronicle – letters@sfchronicle.com
San Jose Mercury News – letters@mercurynews.com
Sacramento Bee – opinion@sacbee.com
Los Angeles Times – letters@latimes.com