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Text Box: Welcome Friends of Equality, The Arizona Legislature has done it again. They have imposed their will on your November Ballot by seeking to make equal opportunity illegal under Arizona’s constitution. Proposition 107 is a clear and present danger to all gains and accomplishments of the past four decades achieved by women and people of color and seriously undermines the benefits of diversity and the essential goal of progressing toward a global view of the world in education, the economy and politics. Prop.107 is bad for our community. It’s divisive. It’s ill-intended. It will immediately re-establish the old norms - which are barriers, which is unequal opportunity. The proposition will do away with outreach, recruitment, financial support and mentoring programs through education, employment and state contracting. Expected Impacts of Prop 107. While the opponents say equal opportunity is no longer needed, “We can look at people’s needs, their income, their social condition, instead.” This initiative would do no such thing; it would not reform equal opportunity to account for economic factors. Rather, Prop 107 would outlaw them completely. This proposed amendment to Arizona’s constitution is put forth by an entity that is not of Arizona. It is by a California institute, deceptively named the American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI), and heavily financed nationally by a cozy circle of well-funded conservative political operatives who have been backing the national assault on diversity policies since the early 1990s. The ACRI’s founder, Ward Connerly in a speech to the Heritage Foundation in March of 2007 referred to them as “Our own vast right wing conspiracy.” 1 This anti-equal opportunity initiative being shopped around the country provides that: The sole purpose of the ballot measure is contained in the five words “or grant preferential treatment to,” which have been consistently interpreted to eliminate a state’s ability to maintain even the very limited equal opportunity efforts that are permissible under Supreme Court equal protection jurisprudence.2 Equal opportunity policies are not preference programs. This rationale echoes the claims of those who have always falsely attempted to label steps toward equality as preferences. Preferences are legal only under a court or administrative order after a specific finding of discrimination. Even in those cases the remedy must be narrowly tailored to ensure that it does not trammel the interest of white males. The ban has several major components: To deny/restrict the nation’s best and brightest Latina/o, African-American, Native-American, and white women access to the nation’s flagship public universities (institutions of higher learning that are sometimes known as Public Ivies, which is defined as being the top thirty or so in the United States). These institutions bring in the top faculty, establish academic centers of excellence, secure significant federal dollars, and recruit the top students in the nation; are usually very competitive in the research field, have a global perspective, have a huge role in stimulating social and economic development,3 and provides the nation and the world with future leaders. Study after study finds that the primary effect of equal opportunity at flagship schools in producing highly educated women and people of color is quite substantial. Bowen and Bok (1998) show that dropout rates of women and people of color from very elite undergraduate and graduate schools are quite low, and the impacts of attending these schools on their earning and career paths are quite positive. Other studies (e.g, Sigal and Tienda, 2005) confirm that graduation rates rise significantly with the quality of the school. As we have seen in California, and elsewhere where this plan has become law, the number of women and people of color entrance to flagship public institutions has dropped dramatically. Another major component of anti-equal opportunity is contracting and procurement programs which concerns business ownership and growth. Hundred of billions of dollars annually are doled out by the federal, state and local governments to private companies for the purchase of goods and services, including the building of roads and freeways, schools, universities, airports and prisons. Prop 107 bars the use of equal opportunity in contracting and procurement programs.4 What has never been widely reported in the coverage of Connerly’s campaigns are his ties to the large public works contractors and construction industry organizations that stand to benefit tremendously from eliminating programs that help level the playing field for women-and minority-owned businesses.5 Data from Grand Rapids, Michigan (after implementation of a similar measure) suggests significant harm to minority-owned business enterprises (MBEs) and women-owned business enterprises (WBEs). Construction project dollars going to MBEs declined by 45% and the amount going to WBEs dropped by 70%.6 Fundamentally, equal opportunity is a global term applied to any one of a number of strategies whose purpose is to promote and ultimately achieve equality of opportunity. Thus it is applicable to employment, education, housing, voting – in sum, to every facet of life.7 This nation was founded on the idea that we all have basic rights. Full inclusion for all relevant stakeholders contributes to a better society because it affords people dignity and fairness. Do we really want to go back to an age when a single group dominated our schools, jobs, and all economic institutions? To do so will lead to increased conflict between the well-to-do and the have-nots, with the attendant social and economic costs and the sounds of a society going down the drain. What truly is sad about Ward Connerly, his rich white benefactors, is that they do not understand the loyalty that women and people of color have toward this nation and the dignity in which they have conducted themselves in the absence of justice and recognition for their efforts and contributions. Until then we will have to endure racial rivalries, gender inequities and the constant assaults. One should not expect women or minorities to believe that racism and sexism is on the decline or that diversity based programs are no longer needed until we reach the time when mutual respect is present. Whatever faults may be attributed to its implementation, equal opportunity has moved us closer to the American ideal of a truly inclusive society. This is a wake-up call to all Americans who cherish the vision of an integrated America, a common humanity, and equality before the law.8 Don’t be immobilized by the irrationality of those who support a return to the pre-sixties era of exclusion, prejudice, and discrimination and call it civil rights. _____________________ 1 Lee Cokorinos, Equal Justice Society 3-Newsletter – Issue 10-Summer 2007. 2 Melissa Hart, Associate Professor Law, University of Colorado Law School, The state-by-State Assault on Equal Opportunity, The Journal of the ACS Issue Groups, pg.160. 3 Patrick Riccards, Improving Education Through Effective Communications, available at http://blog.eduflack.com/2009/02/24/flagship-university-vs-localcollege.sapx 4 Ms. Magazine, available at www.msmagazine.com/winter/winter2008/WardConnerlyPart1.asp
5 See Ms. Magazine, supra note 4. 6 See Hart, supra note 2. 7 Ricardo R. Fernandez, Exclusion and Inclusion: The Impact of Affirmative Action, U.S. Society & Values, August 1997. 8 Carol M. Swain, The New White Nationalism in America: It’s Challenge to Integration, Cambridge University Press 2002. Make a Difference, Donate Here!