No matter how they try to spin it, opponents of affirmative action suffered a setback when Houston’s voters rejected a measure to end it, not mend it, in city jobs and contracting.
Foes of affirmative action have tried to explain away Houston’s vote last Tuesday as the result of the city’s high minority population (The voter turnout of Houston’s black, Latino and Asian-American voters combined roughly equals that of white voters.) and the vigorous support of the city’s outgoing mayor, Bob Lanier.
No question that the mayor’s support helped affirmative action programs survive in that city, just as California Gov. Pete Wilson’s strong opposition to affirmative action helped pass that state’s landmark anti-affirmative action measure, Proposition 209, last year. Affirmative action programs require strong support from the top to be successful, whether in business or in government.
But the most significant difference, a difference that has tremendous implications for the rest of the nation, between the ballot measures in California and Houston was in their wording.
The original language of Houston’s proposition was almost identical to that of Proposition 209, which the Supreme Court has declined to review. It read: “The City of Houston shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment and public contracting.”
But Mayor Lanier persuaded Houston’s city council to change the wording to read like this: “Shall the Charter of the City of Houston be amended to end the use of affirmative action for women and minorities in the operation of City of Houston employment and contracting, including ending the current program and any similar programs in the future?”
Ed Blum, sponsor of the Houston initiative, cried foul. “I favor affirmative action, if that means efforts to reach out and efforts to help economically disadvantaged people,” he said. But he objected to Houston’s program, he said, because it amounted to clear “racial preferences” and a hard “quota” system that awarded a fixed percentage of city contracts to women and minorities.
Yet the voters in a city hardly known to be a bastion of radical liberalism voted to continue the city’s program anyway, sending a message to Congress, where a House committee voted two days later to table until next year a bill that would end the federal government’s affirmative action programs.
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It also sends a signal to other states that have written anti-affirmative action legislation and to Ohio, Florida, Colorado and Washington, where efforts have begun to put similar measures on the ballot. In general, the message is this: Americans don’t mind affirmative action; they just don’t want preferences.
Polls and focus groups have shown similar results for years. Many white Americans, like Blum, say they don’t mind efforts to “reach out” and help the “disadvantaged,” but they don’t want the efforts to disadvantage innocent white males.
After Proposition 209, it looked like affirmative action’s days were numbered. They still may be, but Houston shows the number is not as low as its opponents wish. A major reason is that “affirmative action” is not one program, but many efforts by governments, universities and private businesses. Some are more aggressive than others. All attempt to level a playing field that has been tilted for generations against women and non-whites.
The problem with Proposition 209 and the bill pending in Congress is that they would presume women and minorities should no longer be viewed as disadvantaged by their gender or their race. The national consensus is moving away from helping middle-class blacks and toward targeting the poor of all races.
Yet, while it is happily true that racism and sexism are not the problems they used to be, they are still problems. After three decades of affirmative action programs, it is important to remember that they never were intended to be permanent; they also were not intended to be struck down overnight. It is not only appropriate but downright essential to re-evaluate the wide array of programs and efforts known as affirmative action from time to time, update some, if necessary, and scrap those that have outlived their usefulness.
Sweeping ballot measures take a hatchet, instead of a scalpel, to affirmative action, throwing out all government efforts targeted to help women and minorities, whether they have popular support or not. The best way to thwart such heavy-handed measures is for us, the defenders of affirmative action, to take the initiative and to “mend it, don’t end it,” as President Clinton said. Otherwise, if we don’t act to mend it responsibly, someone else will end it immediately.