Californians in November are poised to reject a ballot measure, which aims to roll back the state’s long-standing ban on affirmative action.
The ballot measure, Proposition 16, was adopted by the state legislature this summer, following the death of George Floyd in police custody, which ignited nationwide outrage and protests. If passed, Prop 16 would undo a state constitutional amendment that prohibits entities receiving government funds to discriminate based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, and national origin.
When introducing the bill, state Rep. Shirley Weber cited the “ongoing pandemic, as well as recent tragedies of police violence” as major reasons why Californians should accept a measure which will make them “acknowledge the deep-seated inequality and far-reaching institutional failures” in areas of race and gender.
Weber, as well as other proponents of Prop 16, hope that the same energy that drove the Floyd protests will propel their cause to victory, but recent polls tell a different story. A September survey taken by the Public Policy Institute of California found that just 31% of people support Prop 16, while 47% oppose it. A September poll of Latino voters, the minority group that would receive the most benefits from affirmative action, found that just over 50% of voters support the measure.
Ward Connerly, the Californian black activist who shepherded the original ban on affirmative action, has also led the opposition to Prop 16, raising more than $1 million in ad money against it.
California was the first state to ban affirmative action when it passed Proposition 209 in 1996. At the time, Connerly argued that affirmative action, adopted in the 1960s to give black students better educational opportunities, has become an “entrenched” and counterproductive policy. The state’s ban became the model for similar successful measures in states such as Washington, Nebraska, and Oklahoma.
Washington voters in 2019, by less than a percentage point, rejected a ballot measure to repeal the state’s ban on affirmative action, which was adopted in 1998. Public opinion more widely has shifted on the issue, however. That same year, a Gallup poll found that for the first time, the majority of white Americans supported the idea.
