Guest columnists
Governor, Legislature shouldn't mess with I-200

By Edward Blum and Roger Clegg
Special to The Times

	Edward Blum
	E-mail this article Print this article Search archive

If Gov. Gary Locke has his way, the Legislature will be voting on a bill that would allow the state's public universities to once again discriminate in favor of some applicants, and against others, on the basis of race and ethnicity.

The proposal is bound to generate another polarizing — and, more importantly, a needless and pointless — public and legislative battle over the issue of racial preferences in public policy. The voters of Washington have already spoken on this issue: In 1998, they voted overwhelmingly for Initiative 200, which forbids the state from treating a person differently based on his or her skin color or ethnic heritage.

The proposed bill would, as The Chronicle of Higher Education reported, "effectively gut" I-200.

Locke is trying to justify his revisitation of this issue by pointing to the Supreme Court's decisions last summer in the University of Michigan cases.

But the court's decisions do not support the governor's proposal. In the first place, the court, in upholding the limited use of race in some university admissions programs, did not say that such discrimination was mandatory — only that it was permissible.

	Roger Clegg

And Washingtonians have sent a clear message that, even if they are allowed to discriminate, they don't want to, because it is divisive, unfair and morally wrong.

The governor's use of the Supreme Court's decision is wrongheaded for another reason as well. If his proposal were passed, the court's decision nonetheless would actually bar the University of Washington from abandoning its colorblind admission polices and starting to use racial and ethnic preferences again.

This is because the court specifically stated that admissions preferences may not be used if race-neutral means have not been given "serious, good-faith consideration."

UW has not only considered such race-neutral alternatives since I-200 was passed in 1998, it has actually employed them — and it has done so with abundant success. As a result of the school's outreach, recruitment and retention programs, the number of "underrepresented minorities" at UW is back to where it was when the school was using preferences.

Therefore, it would be illegal for UW to use racial preferences. Colorblind admissions policies at UW are working well for everyone.

According to UW's Web site, before the passage of I-200, African Americans made up 2.9 percent of the 1998 autumn freshman enrollment at the flagship campus, and today it is virtually the same at 2.85 percent; the Hispanic percentage went from 4.7 percent to 4.34 percent — a drop of fewer than a dozen students.

In other words, the percentage of Hispanics is within a half a percentage point of where it was, and the percentage of African Americans is within a tenth of a percentage point.

The Supreme Court made clear last summer that racial and ethnic preferences can be used only as a last resort, only if there is no other way to achieve diversity. We know that UW cannot meet this test, because it has achieved the same level of diversity without preferences that it was achieving with them.

Without a single doubt, therefore, if the University of Washington begins using race and ethnicity in admissions after being given a green light by the Legislature, a costly lawsuit will be filed (as it was against the University of Washington Law School a few years ago). The state will lose, and the taxpayers will foot the bill.

Moreover, it is also likely that the federal Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights will threaten to cut off UW's federal money if it re-embraces preferences.

President Bush personally — as governor and as president — and the rest of his administration have strongly supported the use of race-neutral means to achieve diversity. Indeed, they have pointed to the very effective outreach, recruitment and retention programs like the ones implemented at UW during the past five years as a model approach.

We at the Center for Equal Opportunity are poised to file a complaint with the U.S. Education Department if Locke's bill becomes law.

A final point about the Supreme Court's decision: Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that she expected that the continued academic progress of African Americans and Latinos would make the use of preferences unnecessary in 25 years. Thus, the court recognized these temporary discriminatory policies to be an aberration to the timeless constitutional principles of equal rights — principles embodied in I-200.

Instead of overturning those principles, the governor and the Legislature should concentrate on the educational achievement gaps that still exist between whites and Asians on the one hand, and blacks and Hispanics on the other. These gaps begin as early as age 3 or 4 for most of these children and continue through high school. Lowering the bar for a handful of minority students applying to UW does nothing for the thousands of other black and Hispanic students who graduate from Washington high schools reading at eighth-grade levels.

Close the gap and there won't be a need to lower the academic bar. That would be a better solution for everyone.

Edward Blum, left, is a senior fellow, and Roger Clegg, right, is general counsel, at the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank in Sterling, Va. www.ceousa.org

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company