Katuria Smith perhaps best exemplifies why affirmative action should be dismantled. A white woman who grew up poor in a single-parent household, Smith was rejected for admission to University of Washington’s law school a few years ago despite finishing cum laude as an undergraduate and posting high LSAT scores.
Guadalupe Gamboa embodies the argument for preferences. Gamboa, who grew up in a migrant worker family in eastern Washington, believes he never would have made it into the law school in the late 1960s without affirmative action. His education, he says, helped him escape poverty and has given him the skills to work on behalf of other farm workers.
Such is the choice Washington state voters will face in November as they decide whether to join California in abolishing affirmative action programs. As was the case with California’s Proposition 209, Washington’s Initiative 200 would dismantle race and gender preferences in state-sponsored affirmative action programs that were established 30 years ago to rectify historical discrimination.
The battle is expected to intensify as pro- and anti-affirmative action forces gear up for the final stretch this fall.
The stakes are particularly high. The outcome in November could have national implications in determining whether the anti-affirmative action movement, which has stalled in legislatures and at ballot boxes in more than 10 states, picks up new momentum.
“If Initiative 200 passes it will be noticed around the country and noticed in Washington, D.C.,” said Jennifer Nelson, spokeswoman for the American Civil Rights Coalition, a Sacramento group that donated $170,000 to support the measure. The coalition is headed by Ward Connerly, a businessman and University of California regent who led California’s successful anti-affirmative action campaign two years ago.
“If Washington state wins, this will help efforts around the country,” she said. “A lot of states will be looking to do this in 2000.”
To an outsider, Washington state could be considered a bastion of color blindness. Though minorities make up only 14 percent of the state’s population, Seattle residents in 1989 and again in 1993 elected a black mayor.
Currently, the city has a black school superintendent. And blacks and Asians hold positions on the school board, city council and various commissions.
King County, the largest county in the state, has a black executive. Spokane, east of the Cascade Mountains in the decidedly conservative portion of the state, had a black mayor from 1982 to 1985. And in 1996, Washington voters elected as governor Gary Locke, who is of Chinese descent and the first Asian-American to hold a mainland state’s highest office.
Yet the affirmative action issue is forcing the state to deal head on with the thorny issue of race.
Some Washingtonians worry that Initiative 200 has tarnished the state’s image of racial harmony. Indeed, the ballot issue has prompted some National Association of Black Journalists members to call for a boycott of the organization’s convention next summer in Seattle.
Whether related to Initiative 200 or just a backdrop to it, the racial climate in recent months has become more strained, tinged by an unusually high number of conflicts: Black employees have filed a discrimination suit against Boeing, charging that the aircraft-maker passed them over for promotions. Another group of blacks have publicly complained about mistreatment from a local restaurant. Minority tradesworkers temporarily shut down construction of the Mariners’ stadium, alleging some white workers attempted to intimidate them with slurs and swastikas.
Chinese-Americans picketed a downtown restaurant, protesting a display of what they considered to be a racist depiction of a Chinese man. Hispanic migrant workers in eastern Washington have been battling white fruit growers over deplorable housing conditions. And Smith has sued the University of Washington Law School, claiming she was discriminated against because she is white.
“Michael Jordan’s son is not more disadvantaged than (a white) child of an out-of-work logger. You cannot look at skin color to determine disadvantage,” said Smith, 32, who is not involved in the Initiative 200 campaign.
“Race and gender preferences do not have a basis in logic,” she said. “I do not wish to have preferential treatment because I’m a woman. I’d like to have the same opportunity as everybody else.”
Across the Cascade Mountains in rural Yakima, Gamboa presented an equally strong case for retaining affirmative action programs. He took a reporter on a tour of dilapidated trailers where the workers who pick the nation’s apples, onions, asparagus and other produce live.
A one-bedroom trailer housed a husband, wife and two small children. Ana Avila, who picks onions, said she pays $320 a month for the trailer that leaks when it rains and roasts in the summer because it has no air conditioning. Frederico Carrales, an apple picker, showed the home in which his family of four lives. Sewage from the bathroom often leaks under the trailer and causes a foul odor. Roaches thrive, he said, and his children are often sick.
“There is extreme poverty, discrimination and the schools are substandard here,” said Gamboa, 52. “Without affirmative action, there is no contest when you are competing with white kids from the suburbs.”
With 2 1/2 months left in the campaign, the election could go either way. Recent polls indicate that the measure has a strong chance of passing. A Seattle Times poll last month found that 64 percent of those surveyed favored the measure, while 25 percent were inclined to vote against it. But the ratio dropped to 49-39 when voters were told the initiative would eliminate affirmative action.
Initiative 200 was launched by state Rep. Scott Smith, responding to a situation that occurred seven years ago when he and his wife took entrance exams for the King County Police Department. Smith’s wife, who scored about 200 points lower than him, was offered a job while he wasn’t.
“I felt something was wrong with the system,” said Smith, 35, a Republican. The Republican lawmaker, who is not related to Katuria Smith, added that he and his wife opted not to pursue employment there. “I felt it was unethical to hire someone because of gender,” he said.
Initiative 200 campaign officials apparently are following the blueprint that worked for California. They have virtually duplicated the language of the California proposition, titled it a “civil rights” issue, made no mention of affirmative action in the text and have consulted closely with Connerly.
Moreover, this summer proponents of the measure brought on as their high-profile co-chairperson a woman, who, like Connerly, is outspoken and black.
“Affirmative action has created a generation of (black) people saying, `You owe me something because of what you did to my forefathers.’ They’re waiting for their 40 acres and a mule,” said Mary Radcliffe, 56, a retired corporate diversity trainer and salesperson.
“Well, if it hasn’t come by now, it’s not coming,” she said. “I don’t think people of color understand what a crutch (affirmative action) is.”
Opponents, though, are working hard to sell their position to minorities and whites.
Larry Gossett, a black King County commissioner, said that whites have benefited more from the county’s affirmative action programs. The state and county consider Vietnam veterans, disabled veterans and people over 40 years of age protected classes of people.
In 1996, Gossett said, King County hired more than 950 people through affirmative action. Six hundred of the hires were white women, he said, and about 100 were white men.
“Washington state has seven classes of people who benefit from affirmative action, yet I absolutely believe it was unfair to single out only women and minorities to lose their protection,” Gossett said.
Others emphasize that affirmative action is important for African-Americans, 70 percent of whom work in the public sector. The state has 4,600 minority businesses, which employ 65,000 people and pour $1 billion into Washington’s economy, they say.
“It’s important that we help these minority businesses to thrive because there is not a level playing field,” said Jean Amos, a member of African American Coalition for Equity, a group planning a march and rally in downtown Seattle later this month.
“We need to ensure that anyone who is qualified has the opportunity to compete for a job,” she said.
