U.S. Supreme Court,
Civil Rights
Sep. 26, 2003
See No Evil?
Proposition 54, the so-called Racial Privacy Initiative, is based on the misguided notion that ignorance is better than knowledge. The initiative, scheduled for a vote on the same day as the recall election, would prevent state and local governments from gathering information about an individual's race and ethnicity.
Erwin Chemerinsky
Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law, UC Berkeley School of Law
Erwin's most recent book is "Worse Than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism." He is also the author of "Closing the Courthouse," (Yale University Press 2017).
Proposition 54, the so-called Racial Privacy Initiative, is based on the misguided notion that ignorance is better than knowledge. The initiative, scheduled for a vote on the same day as the recall election, would prevent state and local governments from gathering information about an individual's race and ethnicity.
Supporters of the initiative, like Ward Connerly, say that its goal is to create a "colorblind society." But ignoring racial issues doesn't mean that they don't exist...
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