BY JON HILLSON
NORTHRIDGE, California-A growing public debate on the future of affirmative action in California is raising the political temperature in the Los Angeles area, as days tick off towards the November 5 vote on Proposition 209.
The amendment to the state constitution would outlaw any affirmative action program based on "race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin" in California's "public employment, public education, or public contracting."
The architects of this sweeping measure, including Governor Peter Wilson and University of California Regent Ward Connerly, have cynically entitled the ballot measure the California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI). Connerly, who heads the "Yes on 209" campaign, is Black.
The proposition does not refer to "affirmative action" but uses the term "preferential treatment." For window dressing, it contains a clause against "discrimination" for "civil rights."
Debate between David Duke, Joe Hicks
In recent days there have been a spate of meetings, speak-
outs, and forums on Prop. 209 in the Black, Latino, and Asian
communities throughout Southern California, amidst increased
media coverage. The lightning rod is a September 25 debate at
the University of California at Northridge (CSUN) between Joe
Hicks, a long-time Los Angeles civil rights leader, and David
Duke, former Ku Klux Klan leader and Louisiana Republican
politician.
Angered by Duke's identification with 209, Wilson has tried, unsuccessfully, to get the CSUN student government, which is hosting the debate, to disinvite Duke. "We asked Wilson, Connerly, and all sorts of other people to participate to present all sides," said Vladimir Cerna, CSUN student body president. "But they turned us down, first for a panel, and then a debate. Jesse Jackson, Colin Powell, and others said no, too. David Duke, who has been opposed to affirmative action for years, said yes."
Connerly stated that the Duke invitation was an act of "political trickery," and that having him be the speaker against affirmative action would "dishonor the integrity of the [Proposition 209] debate."
In the midst of this controversy, CSU chancellor Barry Munitz instructed the system's 23 campus presidents to "stay in line," and refrain from making a collective statement opposing 209, in defiance of the "neutral" stance taken by the state board of trustees.
While supporting "free speech" at the Northridge campus, the Los Angeles Times lamented Duke's presence, noting that there "are better choices than a thinly veiled racist are available" to press the case "to outlaw affirmative action." The Times did not offer the names of any more thickly veiled bigots as alternatives.
Wilson, Connerly, and others dislike Duke's involvement, said Cerna, a 22-year old immigrant from El Salvador, because they present Proposition 209, "as a `civil rights' thing. But that's a misnomer. They say 209 is a California issue, but 209 is important to what's happening across the country. Affirmative action is a national debate."
"If 209 is passed, it will eliminate outreach and recruitment programs here for Blacks, Latinos, poor Asians, programs that offset the difference, that create balance," Cerna said, "and it will open the door to doing the same thing in private education, industry, and hiring."
"What are the arguments against affirmative action? What are Duke's arguments? How are they answered definitively? Why should students take this issue seriously? That's what this debate is all about," he said.
Cerna, like many of the Latino and Chicano students here, participated in the fight against Proposition 187, the sweeping anti-immigrant ballot measure passed in 1994.
"Economic insecurity," Cerna said, is used by politicians to fuel antagonism to immigrants and affirmative action. The attacks on both, he said, "are different bullets fired from the same gun."
Cerna continues to take heat from anti-immigrant organizations. He was recently targeted by Voices of Citizens Together, a pro-187 group, as a leader of "the infiltration of Cal State Northridge by Chicano and Latino radicals and Communists."
This race- and red-baiting effort has had little impact at Northridge, where all 650 tickets for the Hicks-Duke face-off were snapped up by students in three hours on September 16. Many here are urging the event be televised on campus.
Students refuse to cancel debate
On September 17 the student senate, backed by the applause
of the overwhelming majority of 100 students present, most of
them Black, Chicano, and Latin American, rejected a request
from a local state senator to substitute herself for Duke,
during a sometimes tense, two-hour meeting.
They likewise rebuffed demands to cancel the event from the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action by Any Means Necessary (BAMN), a small ultraleft outfit from the San Francisco Bay Area.
Several BAMN members staged a brief disruption of the meeting before being quieted by CSUN activists.
Leaders of the Chicano, Central American, and Black student organizations, along with a Latina activist in the campus women's center defended the debate. "You underestimate our intelligence," one Black Student Union member told the Bay Area ultraleftists, "if you think David Duke is the issue, or that he threatens us. This is a debate, it will take place, and we are not worried about Mr. Duke."
"Duke represents what they [leaders of 209] really think," a Chicano student noted. "Do you think we aren't going to take him on? Do you think we're naive?"
During this open forum, Vanessa Knapton, a Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Congress, addressed the students. "I work on the railroad, and I'm in a union," she said. "I'm one of the few women, and every day I defend affirmative action on the job."
"We have to discuss and debate the issue to explain what's at stake, why affirmative action is a fight in the interests of working people. It's Wilson who fears real debate. I salute you for standing up to him," Knapton said to applause.
Confusion, tension, and resentment surfaced at a September 15 debate, attended by 130 people, sponsored by the Japanese- American Citizens League (JACL) in Gardena.
A Korean-American panelist who backs 209 introduced two Asian-American students he claimed were rejected by Stanford, and several Ivy League schools, while their less qualified Latina "girlfriends" had been accepted.
This assertion led to heated disputes during and after the event among participants. The audience, many of whom were youth, showed by applause their opposition to 209. The JACL, an opponent of 209, has set future debates in Pasadena and Irvine.
Small protests against 209
In late August, hundreds of Asians, from Little Tokyo,
Little Saigon, and Chinatown, along with groups of Lao,
Tibetan, Filipino, Burmese, and other immigrants rallied at Los
Angeles City Hall to protest cutbacks in entitlements and to
defend affirmative action. Hundreds waved banners and placards
opposing 209.
On September 7, over 200 Chicanos and Latinos gathered for a Latin American Summit on Affirmative Action, the majority of them young. Many signed up for door-to-door campaigning in area neighborhoods to explain the stakes in the Latino community for defeating 209.
In late September, Jesse Jackson, National Organization for Women president Patricia Ireland, and others are planning a state-wide bus trip to campaign against the proposition.
Community forums hosted by the Compton NAACP chapter, a rally at Compton Community College, and another at the predominantly Black Pierce College are also scheduled.
A poll published in the Los Angeles Times September 19 indicated 60 percent of potential voters support 209, with 25 per cent against, and the remainder undecided.