I recall back in 1998 seeing a
black man soliciting signatures for a ballot initiative called I-200. I asked
him if he knew what the initiative was about; he told me it was about “equal
rights.” I chuckled at that and responded “Is that what they told you? Yeah, it’s
equal rights for white people.” He just gave me a dumb grin; I guessed that
someone was paying him to con not just himself but others who didn’t read
between its lines. The initiative, sponsored by perennial far-right anti-tax
hack Tim Eyman, stated that “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant
preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex,
color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment,
public education, or public contracting.” The only phrase in this otherwise
empty proclamation is “grant preferential treatment”—code for “affirmative action.”
The reality is that preferential
treatment is practiced all the time, whether it is white people only hiring
other white people, Asians and Indians only hiring other Asians and Indians,
women only hiring other women, etc. It happened before I-200, and continued even
after its repeal by the state legislature last April. I-200 was principally
meant to effect college admissions; despite the fact that only a handful of
black students are admitted to the University of Washington every year, and
Hispanics barely more, you still have 5,000 white high school students in this
state every year who may try to blame “inferior” black and Hispanic students
for being rejected for admission. UW’s Fall 2019 freshman admission profile
indicates that only 34 percent of the freshman class are white, which seems
quite a low percentage for a state often thought of as “white.” Who to blame?
The black enrollment? Only 2.6 percent of the incoming class is black. How
about the Asian and (mostly Asian) international class? They account for 44
percent of UW’s enrollment; while there were always a lot of east Asian
students at UW, the number of south Asian students there has risen dramatically
in the last few years.
I-200 actually passed by a margin
of 58 to 42 percent in this so-called “blue state,” either out of a “misunderstanding”
of its intent (despite the fact that the governor and most newspaper editorials
advocated for its rejection), and has remained a blemish on the state’s supposed
reputation as a “progressive” state. In 2018, activists began gathering signatures
for Initiative 1000, and enough were gathered to require only approval by the
legislature, which passed it along a party-line vote last spring. The initiative
still bans “preferential” treatment, although with some rather confusing mental
gymnastics:
The act of using race, sex,
color, ethnicity, national origin, age, sexual orientation, the presence of any
sensory, mental, or physical disability, and honorably discharged veteran or
military status as the sole qualifying factor to select a lesser qualified
candidate over a more qualified candidate for a public education, public
employment, or public contracting opportunity.
The key phrase is “sole
qualifying factor.” Again, there is more than a crumb of hypocrisy here —not
because it would be underrepresented and discriminated against minorities who were
ever the “beneficiaries” of “preferential treatment” to begin with, but because whites (men and women)
and Asians have been and always will receive de facto “preference” in
employment because of perceptions of “superiority,” and that these groups or
subgroups prefer their own company (isn’t it “coincidental” that “prefer” slips
so easily into “preference”?). Of course “preference” can swing both ways,
depending upon local politics; I could point to the fact that seemingly half of
all of King County Metro’s bus drivers are black—thus well over-represented—and
there seems to be almost no Hispanic drivers. I have frequently sent in on-line
complaints about what I view as a Metro’s culture of discrimination against
Hispanics as exhibited by the behavior a few of its drivers; but as I have
pointed out before, this just seems to be part of the “culture” in general.
Opposition to the initiative is
based in part by the privileged groups' desire to “prefer” to work with people they feel “comfortable”
with—they don’t want to be forced to “reverse-discriminate” against their own
kind—but mostly because it suggests a return to a “quota” system in college
admissions. We are talking about, of course, the concept of “affirmative
action.” I-1000 defines affirmative action as
A policy in
which an individual's race, sex, ethnicity, national origin, age, the presence
of any sensory, mental, or physical disability, and honorably discharged
veteran or military status are factors considered in the selection of qualified
women, honorably discharged military veterans, persons in protected age
categories, persons with disabilities, and minorities for opportunities in
public education, public employment, and public contracting. Affirmative action
includes, but shall not be limited to, recruitment, hiring, training,
promotion, outreach, setting and achieving goals and timetables, and other
measures designed to increase Washington's diversity in public education,
public employment, and public contracting.
Again, what is important is one
phrase here: “factors considered,” meaning that race, sex, disabilities,
veteran status and the like are to be considered in order to “increase
diversity.” You would think, of course, that in a state that wraps itself in
the “progressive” mantel people wouldn’t get all worked up about this, but that
is what was thought in 1998 too. There are a lot of people in this state who
are not only not “progressive,” but wear their racial “privilege” and “entitlement”
like a wet rag. It isn’t just white people, but many Asians and Indians as
well. Although “sex” is listed as a “factor,” white women won’t be effected one
way or the other; their “privileges” and “entitlement” is something that is ingrained in the culture as well as by law. Title IX is a de facto affirmative action program that benefits women, and it has had a hand in bringing the percent of undergraduate students at UW who are female to 53 percent.
The only groups who might benefit from I-1000 are already under-represented
racial or “ethnic” groups, and that is not entirely a certainty, if it ever was
even in the pre-200 days. On the state ballot this coming Tuesday in Referendum
88, which received enough signatures faster than shit out of duck after April’s
vote. The referendum is basically an up or down public vote on I-1000 with a “yes”
approving the initiative, and a “no” vote overturning the action of the
legislature. The “no” campaign has a “cute” poster on the roadsides, displaying
the “justice is blind” image and declaring that everyone is “equal under the
law,” which doesn’t make sense either way. Racists are not “blind,” and what
they “see” is the sole basis of their prejudices; “equality” under the law is a
hypocritical fraud in practice as well, since the self-privileged and entitled
in power are the ones who define what “equal” means and how it is applied—and if
need be, keep their discrimination hidden behind the “silent” treatment.
One of the referendum’s backers
is Russian immigrant Anton Sakharov, who is running for governor. On the
Grassroots Against I-1000 twitter page, Sakharov declares himself as one of
those “real” Washingtonians who thinks those “real” people should be the ones
who decide who is “equal,” not the government. Of course, if we left had left
it to “real” people who is or isn’t “equal,” this would still be a country
where the pre-civil rights era fraud of “separate but equal” would still be the
general practice. Sakharov is white, of course, and he seems to be "concerned" about how I-1000 would "negatively" effect his obviously white children. But you can never know what a bigot
looks like; the twitter page also includes three photographs of what appears to
be people either Southeast Asia or Filipino exhibiting the aforementioned posters,
which at first reminded me of the black man gathering signatures for I-200, although his "rationalization" for doing so probably had more to do with being uninformed. It
is also emblematic of the self-serving hypocrisy of the white racists who are
using these people to promote defeat of 1-1000 under false pretenses, just as that black man was being used by racists.
Oh, and for what it’s worth, vote
“yes” on Referendum 88. It might not change anyone’s life, but at least it will
remove the stain of I-200 from this state’s bio.
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