Ah, Color Blindness - defending Ward Connerly's RPI
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June/July 2002
Attacks on Ward Connerly's RPI Racial
Privacy Initiative, which likely will be a November ballot proposition
in California, have begun. One attack is Emil Guillermo's Thursday, May 7,
2002, SFGate article entitled "Ah, Color Blindness? Connerly's Deceptive Vision."
Kevin Nguyen very ably rebutted Guillermo's attack in a letter to the
editor of Asianweek, which can be found here. I wish to add some
rebutting remarks of my own.
First, it should be clearly known the starting point of the government
"race" identity monitoring discussion in America is the growing misuse of
the decennial census mandated in Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution.
Abetted by recent, misguided, U.S. Supreme Court decisions, America's "of
color," "minority," etc., community has grown their census-count into
disproportionate political power, distinctly by "race." Linking "race"
together with the census's enumeration, political re-districting function
does more than draw voting-district maps with oddly contorted boundaries.
By implying that those of different racial complexions belong driven
together inside ethnically cleansed districts of "their" racial "kind,"
"race" and the census political process recreates the false biology of "race."
The central fallacy of so-called "race" is the imaginary world "district
lines" hypnotically suggesting dividing our single human species into
various complexioned "uses" and "thems." Official government
establishment of this lie, that "race" segments our global population into
distinctly separate "sub-species" peoples ("types"), is the heartless and
soulless essence of "us" against "them"
tribalistic complexion chauvinism. It is false, unnecessary; and before our
eyes it dangerously sows the seeds, possibly, of nightmare real ethnic
cleansing to come.
Emil Guillermo nearly let the cat out of the bag, revealing this
census-driven political skin-pigment war when he whined: "The
Racial Privacy Initiative says to the growing ethnic majority population of
California, 'The less we know about you, the better. Just as you
become the dominant force in the state, go hide under a rock. . .
.'" (My italics & ellipsis.) Clearly, at core the opposition
to the RPI is a power-struggle based on the "biological" slander we sadly
all know as "race." This is less funny than it looks. When "white" people
feel their racial consciousness (again, as before in white nationalist Jim
Crow years when "whites" felt racially threatened), the tale increasingly
will be about dominance, as Guillermo mentioned, not about humanity or
equality. It is past time we got the racial moat out of the public eye,
which the RPI will do, not grow "race" in the public eye as Guillermo and
many "civil rights community" activists want to do.
Guillermo bawls about the RPI "color-blinding" government enumerators to
ethnic medical issues, and to racial discrimination abuses of all sorts,
including housing discrimination. The medical and housing claims are
outright lies. The RPI expressly exempts these, and also police uses of
"race" are exempted. Racial "police profiling" data collection is stopped
by RPI, because it is nothing but a wedge tactic pushing "race-separation"
up the public nose. However, the Legislature could resume government
"color-consciousness" under the RPI by a 2/3rds vote. I would like Mr.
Guillermo to know I fault the RPI for allowing any exceptions. I think if
"race" is a vile superstition, and it is, then "race" absolutely doesn't
exit. The government has no business establishing a belief system (a vile
superstition) for any reason whatsoever.
"Race privacy would make it impossible," Guillermo wails, "to
uncover the changing needs of the state. Send in English-speaking doctors to
administer to the newly arrived Hmong? Do we need native speakers or
translators in certain areas? How will we know?" The short
answer is, we will continue knowing what we need to know. The RPI unhooks
government from the "race" superstition which government created and
nurtured since colonial government first rationalized chattle slavery 340
years ago. The RPI only stops state government obsessing about "race."
Racial discrimination will always be against the law. The RPI does not
impair press freedom or any other weapon in a free society's arsenal for
resolving the social problems which government-created "race" superstition
has left us with.
Guillermo argues, supporting his view of the importance of government
proselytizing the "race" superstition, as if "race" really distinguishes the
three or sometimes five "breeds," "types" of people claimed to comprise
humanity. Guillermo euphemistically substituting "ethnicity" for "race"
cannot cloak the racist implication that his thirst for "dominance"
supports. The subject of Guillermo's advocacy is not the true ethnicity of
our immigrant peoples with their own languages and separate cultures.
"Race" is a slanderous allegation about skin color and "blood" - really
genes and heredity - exactly the same as identifies the domesticated animals
spawned in labs, on farms, and displayed pedigreed on showroom
floors. These have nothing to do with ethnicity or culture. "Race,"
reinserted in Guillermo's piece where he has hijacked "ethnicity," reveals
his hissing racism.
And nothing in the RPI restricts government or anyone recognizing immigrant,
ethnic peoples' culture. The RPI shuts the "blood" spigot of ancestral
genetic lies. I don't have to be a rocket scientist to grasp that the
central mission of civil rights racial equality is the challenge of getting
law and government clean out of the "race" "blood" and genes and ancestry
and skin complexion, and anything else business. With that task, the RPI is
a start.
This brings me back to the starting point of the government "race" identity
monitoring discussion in America. It is about the abuse of superstitious
"race" identities collected on the decennial census mandated in the
Constitution. That is, it is about artificially designating racial "types"
of people, and growing them toward political "dominance" like so many
separate animal species, locked in struggle on the jungle floor of social
Darwinism. See who wants that here in America, where once there was a new
birth of freedom, and all Men were created equal - almost. We still could
all be free and equal in our diverse individuality.
George Winkel
George Winkel practices appellate defense law in the California Fourth Appellate District, the State Supreme Court, and occasionally before the U.S. Ninth Circuit.
Also by George Winkel
The Abolitionist Examiner: "Race" in the Third Millenium
The Multiracial Activist: Shifting Myth of "Black" and "White"
INTERRACIAL VOICE: A Twisted DNA of Remembrance
INTERRACIAL VOICE: "The Debt-- One America Cannot Pay Reparations To Herself"
INTERRACIAL VOICE: "Loving" vs. Civil Rights Law
INTERRACIAL VOICE: Straightening Out The Bell Curve
INTERRACIAL VOICE: On Rejecting Identity Politics
Copyright © 2000 George Winkel and The Multiracial Activist. All rights reserved.
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