In the wake of Washington State’s passage of Initiative 200, pro-affirmative action scholars call for a new combat strategy
Washington state’s governor and former governor, the state’s
Democratic Party, and many other local politicians from both major
parties opposed Initiative 200. Civil rights organizations opposed it.
Businesses like Microsoft and Starbucks opposed it. The unions opposed
it. The largest newspaper in the state opposed it. Higher education
officials and student organizations opposed it. And on top of that, the
coalition formed to defeat it raised more than $1 million — four to
five times what proponents raised, according to The Seattle Times.
But when it came to the electorate, well let’s just say, they
listened to the advice and ignored it. The initiative was approved by
59 percent of the state’s voters earlier this month.
Though 59 percent may not sound like a landslide to some observers,
consider that the initiative won in every county in the state except
one — King County, which includes the city of Tacoma and most of
Seattle. As a result, Washington now becomes the second state, behind
California, to say no to affirmative action.
According to John Carlson, the conservative political commentator
who headed the campaign for the measure, voters said, “`Hey look, this
makes sense. We should have done this years ago. It’s time for us to
look beyond what makes us different.'”
But Arthur Fletcher, former assistant labor secretary under
President Richard Nixon, said there was “a lot of confusion out there
about what the initiative would do. I expect there will be a battery of
lawyers to test exactly how this is going to be carried out.”
“[The initiative process] allows you to simplify an issue and then
impose it on elected officials,” said Gary Orfield, of Harvard
University’s Civil Rights Project. “Most elected officials think
affirmative action is not perfect, but see it as something that is
needed. By bypassing the legislature, [affirmative action foes] force
the issue and then it requires [a lawsuit in] the courts to overturn
it.”
