San Jose To Take A Stand On Measure To Bring Back Affirmative Action

From San Jose Spotlight:

by Adam F. Hutton
August 24, 2020

San Jose is expected to endorse California Proposition 16, which would repeal the state’s 24-year prohibition on affirmative action, when the City Council considers whether to take a position on the divisive ballot measure at its meeting Tuesday.

Assuming voters approve it in November, supporters on the City Council say Prop. 16 will allow the city to “revitalize” its affirmative action programs from the 1990s.

“The color-blind approach has failed,” District 2 Councilmember Sergio Jimenez told San José Spotlight.

If successful, the ballot measure would “open up new avenues for the city and public universities to figure out ways to be more inclusive,” Jimenez said.

California voters in 1996 passed Proposition 209 — effectively banning public policies aimed at leveling the playing field for women and people of color by a margin of less than a million votes in an election with more than 9.5 million ballots cast. California is one of just nine states in the U.S. to do so.

In 2020 there are more than 20 million registered voters in California, a record high, according to Secretary of State Alex Padilla. And attitudes about racial justice have changed immensely since 1996 — especially with growing support for the Black Lives Matter movement after police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis just three months ago, which sparked ongoing protests nationwide.

“We’re in a different era now,” Jimenez said. “And there are people who haven’t changed their views, but overall, I think people have evolved on the subject of affirmative action.”

Republican Gov. Pete Wilson aggressively pushed the ban and labeled affirmative action programs in the state “unfair” and “unjust.” The law prohibits the “discrimination against or giving preferential treatment to any individual or group in public employment, public education, or public contracting on the basis of color, race, sex, ethnicity, or national origin.”

William Armaline, director of San Jose State University’s Human Rights Institute, says that kind of “goofy, third-grade level, shallow identity politics,” still complicates the discussion around affirmative action.

Those arguments are premised on the idea that America solved racism in the 1960s with the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. But that logic doesn’t stand up to even the slightest scrutiny, Armaline said.

“It is not racist against white people to adopt policies that favor people of color who have been oppressed in our society as a means of restorative justice,” said Armaline, who also serves on the board of the San Jose/Silicon Valley chapter of the NAACP. “White people can experience forms of bias. However, to suggest that affirmative action is racism in reverse is to ignore power and oppression.”

Gov. Wilson, who sought the GOP nomination for president in 1996, made Clinton-era Washington wedge issues like immigration and affirmative action the cornerstones of his campaign. And although Wilson’s bid for the White House barely lasted a month, Californians are living with the consequences a generation later.

In San Jose, Prop. 209 forced the city to stop collecting information about race and gender in its workforce — data that was ultimately used by the city’s Office of Equality Assurance to compare the diversity of the city’s payroll with that of the labor market and work to correct imbalances. After the ban on affirmative action, the city tried to continue a program that offered a leg up to minority and women-owned businesses in its procurement process, but a lawsuit put an end to that in 2000.

“The irony is that affirmative action is an old concept that is coming full circle to this moment in time when we can use it to help move us forward as a society from the perspective of people who have been left on the sidelines,” Jimenez said.

Vice Mayor Chappie Jones is also an enthusiastic supporter of Prop. 16. Before they were banned, Jones said the city’s programs to promote diversity on its staff and among its contractors helped soothe the inequities caused by systemic racism and gender discrimination.

Jones told San José Spotlight he favors bringing those policies back “and crafting new ones to meet the needs of today.”

When it approved the budget in June, the City Council created a new Office of Racial Equity with those goals in mind.

“If it passes, Prop. 16 would give the Office of Racial Equity a new tool to address the some of the problems we face now,” Jones said.

If the council votes to support Prop. 16, San Jose will join the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and Gov. Gavin Newsom among other local and state officials who want to bring affirmative action programs back to California. Prop. 16 is also endorsed by Democratic vice presidential nominee and East Bay native Kamala Harris.

Prop. 16 has its opponents as well.

Among its detractors is the Asian American Coalition for Education. That group issued a statement of opposition earlier this year saying the ballot measure “pits racial groups against each other,” and “will surely result in racial discrimination against Asian Americans in California.”

District 10 Councilmember Johnny Khamis told San José Spotlight he’s sympathetic to that point of view. And even though Khamis said he sees a need for affirmative action programs in San Jose that give consideration to race and gender — he isn’t sure whether he’ll vote for the city to endorse the proposition.

“I understand both sides of this issue,” Khamis said. “I’m an immigrant and I struggled when I was younger so I have a heartfelt understanding of how hard it is to get opportunities as a minority. But I think there are worries among people in my district, that this is going to hurt kids who have worked hard their whole lives.”

But Jones says that’s not the way affirmative action programs are designed to work.

“It’s not a zero sum game,” Jones said. “It’s cliché, but a rising tide really does lift all ships. If we can lift up communities that have not had advantages in life then that creates more opportunities for everyone. It can be a win-win.”

Contact Adam F. Hutton at afhutton.sjspotlight@gmail.com or follow @adamfhutton on Twitter.

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