Put Your Faith Into Action:
Bay Area Communities Vote No! On Proposition 54

Proposition 54’s Information Ban:

• Endangers the health of our communities
• Threatens our children’s education
• Weakens the fight against racial profiling, discrimination, and hate crimes  

What is Proposition 54?

Proposition 54 prohibits state and local public agencies from gathering and using information based on race, color, ethnicity, and national origin.  Although Proposition 54 claims to protect “racial privacy,” it actually weakens efforts to track and address racial discrimination and disparities.  

Proposition 54 is one part of a national effort to end the long and noble struggle for civil rights in this country – starting with California.  Proposition 54 is backed by Ward Connerly, the University of California Regent who played a leading role in dismantling affirmative action in California.  

How will Proposition 54 impact Bay Area communities?

Proposition 54 will endanger the health of our communities by making it impossible to identify health disparities in our most vulnerable populations, or target resources and prevention strategies where they are most needed.  For example,

•  When Alameda County found that African American children’s asthma hospitalization rates were 5 times the county average, it created a program that significantly reduced the number of hospital stays.  Proposition 54 would jeopardize important public health efforts like this.
•  Without data showing high rates of tuberculosis among Vietnamese and Mexican immigrants, Santa Clara County could not have developed the targeted outreach that saved lives and prevented a larger outbreak.
•  African American, Latina, and Chinese women have the highest breast cancer mortality rates in San Francisco.  With this information – now threatened by Proposition 54 -- the city has focused outreach and services in the most impacted communities.
•  Under Proposition 54, we would never know Alzheimer’s, breast cancer, and osteoporosis impact the white population at higher rates than non-white populations.
•  The disparities that exist between whites and minorities access to health care would not be available for documentation if Prop 54 passed. For example, most recent data indicates that one-third of patients with end stage renal disease (ESRD) are African American, but are recipients of only 22% of the kidneys. And African Americans wait almost twice as long as whites for a kidney transplant-13.9 compared to 7.6 months respectively.

 

Proposition 54 takes important tools and information away from health care providers and public health departments.  That’s why organizations such as the California Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics in California oppose Proposition 54.

Proposition 54 will threaten our children’s education by letting severe race/ethnic disparities in our schools go unchallenged.  For example,

•  San Jose Unified Public Schools found that high numbers of African American and Latino students lacked the courses required to get into the University of California system.  With this data – which would disappear under Proposition 54 -- SJUPS put new programs in place that increased the number of Latino and African American students eligible to attend California public universities.
•  According to the California Department of Education, the higher the proportion of Latino and African American students in a school, the lower the percentage of trained, certified teachers.

Join the California Teachers Association, the University of California Board of Regents, and California Parent Teachers Association in opposing Proposition 54.

Proposition 54 will cripple the fight against racial profiling, discrimination, and hate crimes by blocking collection of the race and ethnic data that help us to protect civil rights.  For example,

•  Race and ethnic data collected by the San Francisco Police Department showed that African Americans are 3.3 times and Latinos 2.6 times more likely than whites to be searched following a traffic stop.  Information like this helped bring about major changes at the California Highway Patrol, after a lawsuit charged that CHP officers were stopping Latino and Black male drivers solely because of their skin color.
•  In the three months following 9/11, over 104 anti-Arab hate crimes were reported in San Jose and San Francisco.  Collection of this race and ethnic data helped law enforcement and social service agencies enhance protection of Arab communities and support for hate crime victims.
•  In the year 2000 alone, more than 27,000 reports of employment discrimination were filed in California—race being the number one basis for discrimination.

Proposition 54 is opposed by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights, the Progressive Jewish Alliance, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), CA Council of Churches, the Asian Law Caucus, and the NAACP.

Continue the faith community’s tradition of moral leadership.
Put your faith in action by:

1) Telling your friends, family, and members of your faith community!
2) Mobilizing your faith community to do community education and get out the vote activities.
3) Registering to vote by September 22
4) Voting No on October 7!

For full coverage of the issues, polling place information, and voter registration go to www.smartvoter.org

This flyer was produced by the Social Equity Caucus (SEC), a coalition of more than 75 economic, social, and environmental justice groups, as well as labor, faith, and youth organizations.  SEC forges strategic partnerships to build leadership and power among the Bay Area’s low-income communities and communities of color.  For more information, contact Urban Habitat at: 510 839-9512.