EQUAL OPPORTUNITY?

October 29, 1998
	This November, residents in Washington state will vote on a measure to end affirmative action. Correspondent Jim Compton reports on the Washington Civil Rights Initiative. [Editor's Note: Initiative 200 was overwhelmingly adopted by Washington voters, with some 65 percent of voters supporting the repeal of Affirmative Action.]

	ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Jim Compton of KCTS-Seattle reports on Washington State's ballot initiative to end affirmative action. MARY RADCLIFFE, Co-Chairman, 1-200: I've never been a victim, and I hear people say, well, you're strong, you can get over that.
	Not a victim.
	JIM COMPTON: Mary Radcliffe is involved in her first political campaign. The Seattle area homemaker is co-chair of a drive to end all state programs giving advantages to minorities and women. MARY RADCLIFFE: Have they ever thought of how degrading and how arrogant they are to assume because of someone's color skin or their sex that the government needs to help them along? JIM COMPTON: Mary Radcliffe is speaking on behalf of Initiative 200, a ballot measure stirring deep emotion here over racial preference in hiring in education. MARY RADCLIFFE: Yes, the doors were shut in my face. But did that keep me from knocking? Did that tell me that I had to go back to that same door and tell them, well, the law says you owe me this? No. I kept knocking on doors until the one that opened. JIM COMPTON: At this rally of suburban Republicans in Bellevue, Washington, Radcliffe is among sympathetic voters. But in other settings she has faced doubters and hecklers. MAN IN AUDIENCE: And you want to talk about qualifications. You must think you changed colors or something. I don't understand it. But, you know – JIM COMPTON: Opponents see Initiative 200 as an attempt to roll back 30 years of economic and educational gains for people of color and women. The very wording of the ballot title, called "The Washington Civil Rights Initiative," is controversial. The ballot says, "Shall government be prohibited from discriminating or granting preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, education, and contracting?" Dr. Hubert Locke, a prominent civil rights scholar at the University of Washington, thinks not.
	Hypocrisy?
	DR. HUBERT LOCKE, Dean Emeritus, University of Washington: It's purposeful hypocrisy, and it worked in the case of Prop 209 in California. You call it a civil rights initiative and you say we're against segregation; we're against discrimination; we're against preferences; we think all people ought to be treated alike; and the average voter will say, well, yes, certainly, I agree with that. I have said on many occasions it's an absolute insult to those of us who struggled for the civil rights cause 30 years ago to call it a civil rights initiative. That's just a gross slap in the face. WARD CONNERLY, President, American Civil Rights Coalition: This is not about taking away opportunity. It's not about ending all affirmative action. JIM COMPTON: Whatever their intent, advocates put the measure on the ballot with more than 200,000 signatures from Washington voters. The campaign will be one of the most expensive ever waged for a ballot measure in Washington State. Supporters say they will spend about $400,000. The opponents say their spending could exceed $1 million. Initiative 200 has attracted a steady stream of national figures to campaign for both sides. Ward Connerly, author of the successful California initiative, taunts his opponents. WARD CONNERLY: I don't know why the other side has such heartburn when we talk about equality. Equality is not bad public policy; it's good public policy. We have a cultural equality in this nation. We're trying to perfect that experiment – that noble American experiment in which all of us, as American citizens, will be treated equally, without regard to our skin color, our ethnicity, our sex, our national origin. JIM COMPTON: Affirmative action programs have been in place in this state for more than two decades. And today there are more than 4500 firms competing for hundreds of millions of dollars in state contracts. MEL STREETER, Architect: In 1976, affirmative action came into being and suddenly my firm started to prosper and grow. JIM COMPTON: Mel Streeter is a Seattle architect who was once told by a high school counselor he should go into teaching or coaching. Today his architectural firm grosses over $2 million a year – most of it as subcontractor on large, public projects. The contracts come to him because the state earmarks a percentage of work for minorities and women. MEL STREETER: I don't feel like we've ever taken a job away from any of the majority firms. I mean, to prove my point, in the State of Washington 90 percent of the work goes to the majority males in the contracting and design industry, okay? 10 percent goes to mainly women and about 3 percent go to minority firms. JIM COMPTON: Like yourself? MEL STREETER: Yes.
	Initiative 200.
	JIM COMPTON: Supporters of Initiative 200 have made no claims of adverse impact of affirmative action on white businesses, so-called reverse discrimination. One thing on which all agree is that the main beneficiaries of affirmative action in Washington State have been white women. Anne McPhee is a general contractor in the Seattle area. ANNE McPHEE, General Contractor: I still have to be the low bidder. I mean, there's nobody standing there down at Olympia giving me a contract just because I show up in a skirt. I think it's providing opportunities for minority- and women-owned contractors to prove that they can compete in the industry and be viable business enterprises. JIM COMPTON: And McPhee says there is another effect – changing attitudes of men in the workplace. ANNE McPHEE: Let's say their comfort level is stretched to where an electrician who has never worked side by side with a minority or woman gets the opportunity to do so and find that hey, this ain't so bad, that, you know, that's where we want to be. JIM COMPTON: In education the issue is especially complex. Although this year's undergraduate freshman class was less than 2 percent black, the University of Washington is being sued for admitting to its law school a black male over a white female with a higher grade point average. Meanwhile, Asian-American enrollment has soared nearly 19 percent on the UW campus. Because of high grades and test scores, Asian-Americans need no benefit from racial preferences, and many say they would prefer not to be treated as a minority. Nevertheless, the state's Asian-American governor, Gary Locke, a leading opponent, says he was a beneficiary of affirmative action. GOV. GARY LOCKE, (D) Washington: Well, I was admitted to Yale University under an affirmative action program. Yale was looking for students of color, students from the West Coast, because most of their students were from the East Coast, and they were looking for students from the public schools, because many of their students, most of their students were from private academies and private schools. So I was kind of a "three-fer." I joked than I'm a "three-fer." But I still had to pass the same exams and write the same papers and meet the same graduating requirements as anybody else.
	Ending discrimination?
	JIM COMPTON: The state's major newspapers have all come out in opposition to I200. And the publisher of the Seattle Times, Frank Blethen, took the unusual step of buying a full page ad in his own paper against the initiative. The state's largest private employer, the Boeing Company, has come out against Initiative 200. Boeing has been joined by Microsoft and most of the state's large companies. The opponents have enlisted dozens of public officials, churches, synagogues, and labor unions to fight the measure. Supporters of I200 launched an early television campaign saying that the end to discrimination can only be achieved if all racial preferences are halted. I200 AD SPOKESPERSON: Understanding I200. CHILD IN AD: Bringing us together. JOHN CARLSON, Co-Chairman, I-200: I think most Americans believe that we are dwelling on race too much. JIM COMPTON: John Carlson, the conservative activist spearheading Initiative 200. JOHN CARLSON: I think the civil rights movement, the traditional civil rights movement got off track, and instead of being a movement that tried to expand liberty and opportunity for all people, it became a race lobby. And instead of focusing on making sure that all Americans had opportunities and rights, it became a movement that focused on race conscious remedies. Instead of aiming toward a colorblind society, it aimed toward a color-conscious society. JIM COMPTON: Independent opinion polls have been predicting that Initiative 200 would pass comfortably. Nevertheless, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, campaigning against the proposal during one of four trips to this state, said Washington's vote was only part of a larger picture. JULIAN BOND, Chairman, NAACP: Twenty states have tried to do what's been done in California and only two have succeeded: California, which passed Proposition 209, and Washington State, which has managed to get it on the ballot. The other good news about affirmative action is that three times this year. The Congress has voted on measures to repeal federally mandated affirmative action and three times this year by bipartisan majorities, Democrats and Republicans alike, the Congress has rejected these calls for repeal. So – JIM COMPTON: The campaign began early, almost six weeks before the election, because 45 percent of the voters in this state now cast their votes by mail. Both sides agree that much of the fight has been to win the votes of absentees.