It is official! With the Arizona Secretary of State’s decertification of Proposition 104, the effort to end affirmative action in Arizona has come to an end. It’s over not only because the people of Arizona obviously didn’t want part of Ward Connerly’s “Super Tuesday” campaign to eliminate affirmative action in multiple states; it’s over because the signatures that were collected to support this initiative were staggeringly ineligible. According to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, over 40% of the “qualifying” signatures were invalid and included the phony signatures of Jimmy Carter and Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi. Monday’s edition of The Huffington Post actually shared a photo of these invalid signatures–empirical evidence of the fraudulent activities used to support this effort to end affirmative action.

Deception has ruled this effort from the very beginning. Calling these campaigns to end the nation’s most effective civil rights policy to date “Civil Rights Initiatives” is misleading. Using jargon to confuse “preferences” with “considerations” of race in decision-making is dishonest. In fact, lies regarding the true nature and prevalence of disparity and discrimination have continued to drive the Connerly campaign. In 1996, many California voters didn’t understand that the “civil rights” initiative they were voting for would actually eliminate programs that were effective in generating equal access to opportunity, resulting in the passage of Proposition 209. The effects were seen immediately in some areas, and now we’re able to quantify them: sharp declines and segregated opportunities for people of color regarding admissions to public institutions of higher education and dramatic declines in public contracting awards to businesses owned by people of color and women of all racial groups have impacted the ability of CA’s diverse population to competitively work toward economic self-sufficiency.

Thankfully, Arizona isn’t having it. What began as a five-state effort has now dwindled to two. The effort to qualify ballot initiatives for the November election in three states–Missouri, Oklahoma, and the latest, Arizona–have failed. Only two more, Colorado and Nebraska, remain.

Congratulations to those freedom fighters who have unveiled–yet again–the deceptive tactics used to support structural exclusion and systems of inequality. Our work is not done, but this is certainly a victory worth celebrating!

For more information about the Arizona initiative, contact Mel Gagarin at the NAACP LDF at (212) 965-2783 or mgagarin@naacpldf.org.

Copyright 2008 Monique W. Morris

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