Last year, when Californians had to choose between Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger and incumbent Democrat Gray Davis to be their governor, they also had to vote on another divisive issue: Proposition 54. This law, the so-called Racial Privacy Initiative, sought to ban the state collection of information on race, ethnicity, color or national origin.
It was a law, said its supporters, that would make California colorblind. It was championed by businessman Ward Connerly, who was also the primary force behind Proposition 209, which banned affirmative-action programs in the state in 1996.
"The only way we're going to solve the dilemma of race," said Connerly, "is to start seeing ourselves as basically one human family, not divided by color or by where our granddaddy came from."