Another university leader has joined in an academic consensus
against the current version of an initiative that could hamper
outreach efforts and curb social science research ““ UCLA
Chancellor Albert Carnesale.
On Friday Carnesale voiced his concerns about the Racial Privacy
Initiative, a ballot initiative that seeks to ban the state from
collecting and maintaining most forms of race-based data.
“It appears to me to be unacceptable,” Carnesale
said.
Slated for a vote in March 2004, the initiative has come under
fire from many students, professors and administrators who argue it
would prevent researchers from identifying societal problems
correlated with race.
One of the best examples of the RPI’s possible detrimental
effects, Carnesale said, is its potential to eliminate
accountability for the university’s outreach efforts.
“We spend a great deal of money on outreach
programs,” Carnesale said. “If we cannot know the
histories of people who come to campus, including their race and
ethnicity, how will we know whether it’s working or
not?”
The initiative’s campaign leader, University of California
Regent Ward Connerly, maintains that it will only impair
researchers who want the state to gather data for them.
“That doesn’t mean you can’t collect it on
your own,” Connerly said in May.
Connerly who spearheaded Proposition 209 ““ the 1996
initiative that banned state use of affirmative action ““ also
continues to fight for what he calls a “color-blind”
society where race and ethnicity are no longer considered in the
public arena.
“I’ve always felt it was idiotic or at least
offensive to categorize and classify citizens on skin color and
physical traits into groups,” Connerly said.
Some institutions, including hospitals and prisons, are exempted
from the data-collection ban.
But Carnesale pointed out that the initiative’s selective
exemptions are problematic because they make the initiative
inflexible.
“Once you read something that has exceptions for medical
reasons and other reasons, it’d be pretty hard to make the
case … they intended (something else) to be an exception too, but
that they forgot to mention it,” he said.
Many student groups and UC administrators have spoken out
against the initiative since it qualified for the ballot in
June.
In August UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl said the RPI
would make it impossible for the UC to measure its efforts to
improve student and faculty diversity on its campuses.
The UC Student Association, a coalition of the graduate and
undergraduate student governments systemwide, has made fighting the
initiative a major point of focus for the upcoming year.
“It makes it sound like it would get rid of racial
profiling,” said UCSA Chairman Stephen Klass. “But it
would completely shift our ability to see how social inequality
plays out.”
Also, in July Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a regent by virtue of
his position, requested that the regents discuss the item at a
board meeting sometime before January. One of the main points he
wanted to explore was the RPI’s possible effects on public
health research.