BY JIM ALTENBERG

SAN FRANCISCO - The debate over California Proposition 209, the misnamed California Civil Rights Initiative, has heated up over the past few weeks. Proposition 209 would amend the California state constitution to prohibit state and local government bodies from continuing or instituting any affirmative action program - in education, employment, or contracting for services used by the government.

Proposition 209 states 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 bill's authors, Glynn Custred and Thomas Wood, assert that affirmative action is a discriminatory system that unfairly grants privileges to Blacks, women, and others. They argue that affirmative action is divisive, and claim that it constitutes "reverse discrimination" that denies "qualified" white men jobs in favor of less "qualified" minorities and women.

The measure's proponents have tried hard to pitch their reactionary measure as a legacy of the civil rights battles against Jim Crow segregation. The California Republican Party planned to air a television ad supporting Proposition 209 quoting Martin Luther King Jr. However, protest by the King estate and wide publicity forced the Republican Party to pull the ad.

Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidate Robert Dole has jumped on the 209 bandwagon in hopes of shoring up his electoral chances in California, where he runs far behind William Clinton in the polls. Until recently, the Dole campaign had taken its distance from what vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp called a divisive "wedge issue."

The campaign against affirmative action has been bipartisan from the outset. As president, Clinton ordered a review of all federal affirmative action programs with an eye toward cutting them back. He has not made affirmative action a feature of his election campaign, prompting some opponents of Proposition 209 here to charge that they are getting little help from the Democratic Party.

Omari Musa, Socialist Workers candidate for U.S. Congress in the 9th C.D. (Oakland/Berkeley), told the Militant, "Affirmative action and the fight around Proposition 209 has been one of the central political issues in this election, along with the fight for immigrant rights." The Socialist Workers candidates in California are calling for a "No" vote on Proposition 209, and urging workers and young people to join in defending affirmative action.

In a speech October 28 in San Diego, Dole called on voters to "guarantee that race will find no significance in the laws of California. [Proposition 209] will elevate individual civil rights above group entitlements."

Dole claimed affirmative action had been a failure for Blacks. "Every time I drive to work in Washington, D.C. or drive down North Capital Street I see dozens of Black men without work, I say to myself, `What has this law done for them. Absolutely nothing.' " While admitting that racism still exists, Dole proposed to bring "a growing economy to every community. Give people an opportunity to make it in the private sector. They don't need quotas and preferences." Economic crisis hits Blacks, Latinos
The capitalist economic crisis has hit Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans as well as women particularly hard. An anti-209 brochure issued by the American Civil Liberties Union explains that today the unemployment rate for Black men remains double that of whites, and it is higher for Latino men. About 31 percent of Black families in California make less than $15,000 a year, as do 25 percent of Latino families, compared to 16 percent of whites. The net worth of African-Americans in the state averages $9,359, compared with $44,980 for whites. Pay rates for women remain at 71 cents for each dollar earned by men, and these rates are even lower for women of oppressed nationalities.

In addition, Blacks and other oppressed nationalities face the worsening living conditions, police violence, crumbling schools, and inadequate housing characteristic of increasing resegregation throughout the United States.

"The attacks by the University of California Board of Regents became the opening shots in the current drive to gut affirmative action in California," noted Musa. "These actions are being repeated in other states and by the federal government. Proposition 209 is the next step in this offensive."

The passage of Proposition 209 will be used by opponents of affirmative action to go after gains Blacks, women, and Latinos have won in basic industry, Musa added.

At the University of California, the Board of Regents voted in 1995 to end affirmative action in student admissions and faculty hiring. The Regents' plans were met with student-led protests and opposition by university officials and faculty. Despite the protests, the new measures are being implemented.

UC officials now estimate that non-Asian-American minority freshman enrollment at the Berkeley campus will drop from 23 percent this year to 12.5 percent of the 1998 class, when admissions without affirmative action begin. Asian-American students comprised 41 percent of the 1995 Berkeley freshman class. Community colleges and state universities will also be affected by Proposition 209, as will some public high school desegregation and remedial programs. Protests against Proposition 209
There have been numerous small protest actions in defense of affirmative action, the most important being last summer's march from Sacramento to San Diego led by Chicano youth who held rallies and distributed leaflets along the way. "La Marcha," as the weeks-long protest was called, culminated in actions outside the Republican Party national convention.

A series of anti-209 events featuring prominent Democrat Jesse Jackson, National Organization for Women leader Eleanor Smeal, and United Farmworker official Dolores Huerta promoted election of Democrats as the way to defend affirmative action. AFL-CIO officials have endorsed local affirmative action groups and put their names on leaflets sent out to union members. But their main focus has been campaigning for Clinton's reelection, not defending affirmative action.

Much of the literature put out by organizations campaigning against Proposition 209 argues that supporting affirmative action does not mean quotas should be used to enforce it. "Affirmative action," states a leaflet from the South Bay Labor Council's Committee on Political Education, "allows public agencies and schools to use loose goals and timetables to bring a sense of fairness into the workplace and address racial and gender disparities."

"Affirmative action does not permit quotas - quotas are illegal", states a brochure from the East Bay Californians for Affirmative Action. It "does not require the selection of unqualified individuals."

Much of the anti-209 material focuses on who supports the measure, including ex-Klansman David Duke; UC Regent Ward Connerly, a millionaire businessman who is Black; and California governor Peter Wilson, whose failed presidential campaign was based on opposition to affirmative action and immigrants' rights.

Working people should fight to defend affirmative action with quotas, argued Socialist Workers candidate Musa. He noted that affirmative action quotas were conquests of the massive civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. These battles demolished the racist Jim Crow system of legally enforced segregation in employment, education and housing in the south. In the late 1960s and 1970s new forces among women and Chicanos joined the challenge to discrimination and inequality.

"Racist and sexist discrimination drives down the wages of all workers, and enables the rulers to sow divisions within the working class that makes united struggles more difficult," Musa continued. "Forcing employers, school admissions officers, the government, and others to accept at least minimum quotas of oppressed nationalities and women applicants - taking `affirmative action' on their behalf - was an important gain that strengthened the entire working class. Racist practices and attitudes among white working people began to break down; the ability of the bosses to hold down the value of labor power of oppressed nationalities and women diminished. For this reason, the employers and their two-party political system began to attack affirmative action quotas, along with other measures such as busing for school desegregation, bilingual education, and abortion rights, as soon as they were won.

"The fate of these gains will not be decided by the November 5 vote," Musa stated. "These conquests cannot simply be erased by a ballot proposition. The entire labor movement has a stake in fighting to defend and extend affirmative action."  
 
 
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