The Washington Post - November 2nd 1997
by Sue Anne Pressley
Houston - On Tuesday, Houston could become the first US city to cast aside its affirmative action programme - a decision that has supporters on both sides of the complex issue eagerly watching what happens here.
The ballot question in the nation’s fourth largest city is the first since voters in California decided last year to eliminate race and gender preferences in state contracts, employment and school admissions. That law is being appealed to the Supreme Court. If successful here, other cities and states may be encouraged to launch their own voter initiatives to challenge such programmes, according to national organisations involved in the issue.
But many predict the Houston case will be very close. Led by powerful outgoing Mayor Bob Lanier, defenders of the 13-year old city programme are working hard to convince voters that the set-asides are needed to remedy past discrimination and to create a level playing field for businesses competing for city contracts.
However, Ed Blum, a Houston businessman and activist who is leading the fight to eliminate the programme, said “the old way” is unfair, insensible, and doesn’t achieve what it is designed to achieve.
“The premise of the current affirmative action programme in Houston is that women and all minorities are disadvantaged and need special remedial help to compete and that everyone else is somehow privileged,” said Blum, whose group collected 20,000 signatures on a petition to force the initiative. “It is a small programme that continues to enrich a small handful of well-connected political insiders who year after year garner millions of dollars of contracts. we believe the government should offer a helping hand based on need and disadvantage.”
So far, the issue has seemed to create more excitement outside Houston than in it, where a mayoral campaign also is underway. According to a recent poll by the Houston Chronicle and KHOU-TV, 29% of voters want to eliminate the programme, while 56% want to retain or expand it, with the rest undecided. The three leading mayoral candidates have said they favour keeping the programme, but with some changes.
Since 1984, Houston’s affirmative action policy has required businesses with city contracts to give 20% of the work to women and minorities. In fiscal 1997, about 21% of the US$1 billion in contracts went to businesses owned by minorities and women - up from 16% a decade ago.
The Houston case is particularly interesting, observers said, because the city is so ethnically diverse, with nearly 50% of its population black and Hispanic. John J Miller vice president of the Centre for Equal opportunity, a conservative think tank, said grass roots activists in other areas will be encouraged to work to eliminate their own affirmative action programmes if Houston ends its policy.
“I can say from watching what happened in California, these are very controversial initiatives,” Miller said, “But most Americans support the colorblind law. California, the country’s most diverse state, proved it last year when they passed Proposition 209... I think if it passes in Houston, it will show that people in as diverse a city as Houston can support this. If that kind of electorate endorses colorblind law, that sends a very powerful message to other states and Congress.”
But Rene Redwood of the Washington-based Americans for a Fair Chance, a coalition of civil rights legal defence organisations, said voters must not forget the reasons why affirmative action programmes were enacted in the first place.
“Any time there’s an attack on affirmative action, it’s an attack on equality of opportunity,” Redwood said, “whether it is a municipal locality like Houston or whether it’d federal legislation making efforts to end the access that is brought about as a result of affirmative action. Affirmative action is about giving people and organisations the opportunity to take a chance, show their talents. It allows governments to cast a wide net, to outreach and recruit individuals who do not look like leadership.”