The Color Bind: California's Battle to End Affirmative Action.

• Author: Lind, Michael

By Lydia Chavez University of California Press, $40

In recent years, California's system of voter initiatives -- originally designed by progressive reformers as a way to circumvent lobby-dominated legislatures -- has unexpectedly become a surrogate for national debates about taxes, immigration, and race. In The Color Bind, Lydia Chavez, a professor of journalism at UC Berkeley, has provided a fascinating and objective account of Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative. Passed in 1996, Prop 209 echoes the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in attempting to outlaw discrimination or the granting of preferences by the State of California on the basis of "race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin."

Chavez treats all sides in the controversy with detachment and fairness. The initiative originated with two white academics, Glynn Custred and Thomas E. Wood, who had grown frustrated with an academic world dominated by those who wanted to promote diversity in hiring, by discriminating against whites if necessary. The extremes to which the logic of racial preferences was being taken became apparent when Assembly Speaker Willie Brown introduced a measure (vetoed by Governor Wilson) which called for "enhanced success at all educational levels so that there are similar achievement patterns among all groups regardless of ethnic origin, race, gender, age, disability, or economic circumstance." If taken seriously, this would appear to require that physics degrees be awarded to Scots-Irish in proportion to their percentage of the population.

It was easy to make a case that this kind of measure violated the basic ideals of American liberalism. Unfortunately, by the early 1990s liberalism had become entirely identified with support for affirmative action, defined not as outreach but as the promotion of less-qualified members of favored groups over more qualified white men. No bipartisan coalition of race-neutral liberals and conservatives materialized. Instead, the initiative drafted by Custred and Wood was promoted by conservative Republicans seeking to capitalize on resentment of affirmative action by white men (in California at the time of the vote, whites were only 52.8 percent of the population but accounted for 88 percent of registered voters). While presidential candidates Clinton and Dole skirted the issue for fear of offending one group or another, the debate quickly polarized, with the most ardent supporters of Prop 209 found among...