EDITORIAL
Vote Down Ban on Racial-Data Collection
San Jose Mercury News
August 22, 2003

Tucked in the shadows of California's recall election craze is a proposition that could cripple efforts to fix racial inequities.
On its face, Proposition 54 sounds like a legitimate move to protect personal privacy rights. It's not. It's a short-sighted attempt to deny California's new reality as a multi-racial society and would hamper a host of agencies working to end discrimination.
Sacramento businessman and University of California regent Ward Connerly, the initiative's author, has seized a rhetorical opportunity by recasting the Classification by Race, Ethnicity, Color or National Origin Initiative as the Racial Privacy Initiative.
Supporters of Connerly's plan say it would take race out of the equation and move us closer to a color-blind society, starting with our government. The idea is to make race irrelevant.
But race matters.
Race-based data is vital not only in determining and tracking diseases that disproportionately affect various ethnic groups -- including whites -- but also in uncovering racism, ranging from racial profiling to environmental inequities.
A broad statewide coalition of medical associations, civil rights groups, law enforcement agencies and others say Proposition 54 would further deepen the racial divide by eliminating data used to combat disparities.
There are exemptions in the measure for medical research subjects and patients, and for law enforcement purposes. But those exemptions are too narrow and in some cases ambiguous. Interpretations could end up being decided in court.
For example, the exemption for law enforcement includes suspect descriptions and undercover assignments. But law enforcement agencies, including the San Jose Police Department, say Proposition 54 could constrict their efforts to fight racial profiling. The department now keeps records on the race of drivers in routine traffic stops.
And while Connerly might want to be race-blind, diseases are not. Medical professionals say the exemptions in the proposition are not enough: Doctors and researchers now rely heavily on some non-medical race-based data to track health issues. In Santa Clara County, for example, they use death statistics, which no longer would include race, in examining why heart disease, lung and breast cancers disproporationately affect whites,

and why liver cancer rates are higher among Asian Pacific Islanders, according to Dr. Martin Fenstersheib, the county's health officer.
With California leading the way in becoming a majority-minority state, we should not seek to be blind to the race issue. Rather, we should use all the resources we have to end the discrimination that is part of everyday life for so many people. Proposition 54's attempt to silence the debate does nothing to help California get there.