Though Washington state is considered by many to be one of the most liberal states in the nation and has a multi-racial population that represents literally all of the races in the world, it bears the burden of being one of the few states that passed draconian anti-affirmative action legislation.
The far-right has long understood that language means everything. If you give people the right-sounding rationale, you can get them to do almost anything. So black University of California regent Ward Connelly was put in front of California Proposition 209, an effort to destroy affirmative action in higher education. They used the language of the civil rights movement to bolster their claim that race should not be used to make decisions for higher education or for state contracting.
They sold that notion in California and then brought it to Washington state as Initiative 200 and got it passed here, as well. No other state would touch it because they clearly saw where it was headed.
In the meantime, a supposedly liberal state passed a conservative initiative to end any opportunities for racial minorities to get a fair shake in education and state contracting.
Ignoring history
For whatever reason, most Americans either forget or decide to ignore our history in this nation: 250 years of slavery and then another 100 years of legalized racial segregation, called Jim Crow laws. We paid taxes during the 100 years of Jim Crow but could not fully use any of the public facilities or receive any benefits from our tax dollars.
All of us pay taxes as citizens and those taxes are used to build our roads, schools and other public buildings or facilities. All of us are supposed to receive an equal amount of benefits back from those taxes, but that is not the way the system worked. Whites received far more than their share. Affirmative action was supposed to make sure things equaled out, but the conservatives — as they usually do with programs like this — demonized it as a giveaway to the poor and undeserved.
Connelly and his right-wing conservative caucus linked up with conservatives in Washington state to create language that liberals and moderates could stomach. “It’s not fair to do anything by race” was the foundation for the initiative, but it left in place the affirmative action piece for women.
Now, minority enrollments in colleges are still dropping, and 99 percent of all state contracts are now in the hands of white businesspeople. Hundreds of companies owned by white men simply transferred their ownership to their wives or daughters and continued to do business as usual.
So when we add up the affirmative action dollars spent to correct the past, the majority of it has gone to the same people who had it before. Black people and other minority groups are shut out from opportunities, specifically in state contracting — worse than they were with Jim Crow laws, but now it’s done under a false banner of racial fairness.
Making it fair for all
The African-American political action committee has been pulling together a coalition of people who want to change this draconian anti-affirmative action law. Our intent is to make sure that everyone receives back a full return on their tax dollars and everyone fully participates in the educational and contracting opportunities created by those tax dollars.
This coalition will include many of the same people who fought so hard against I-200 when it was first passed. Most of us never really thought that the liberal people in this state would be bamboozled by this conservative agenda, but they were, and many were so fooled they thought they were taking a step toward true racial equality by doing so.
I have never done an initiative, nor do I know anyone in my immediate political circles who have, but we must do this. We cannot let this law stand on the books of this state because it is not representative of the kind of state I think we have.
We need to revisit this in light of rapidly changing racial demographics to make sure everyone benefits from everything our tax dollars generate.
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CHARLIE JAMES is co-founder of the Martin Luther King Jr. County Institute (mlkci.org). To comment on this column, write to MPTimes@nwlink.com.