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Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California (Volume 30)
This book looks beyond the headlines to uncover the controversial history of California's ballot measures over the past fifty years. As the rest of the U.S. watched, California voters banned public services for undocumented immigrants, repealed public affirmative action programs, and outlawed bilingual education, among other measures. Why did a state with a liberal political culture, an increasingly diverse populace, and a well-organized civil rights leadership roll back civil rights and anti-discrimination gains? Daniel Martinez HoSang finds that, contrary to popular perception, this phenomenon does not represent a new wave of "color-blind" policies, nor is a triumph of racial conservatism. Instead, in a book that goes beyond the conservative-liberal divide, HoSang uncovers surprising connections between the right and left that reveal how racial inequality has endured. Arguing that each of these measures was a proposition about the meaning of race and racism, his deft, convincing analysis ultimately recasts our understanding of the production of racial identity, inequality, and power in the postwar era.
392 pages, Paperback
First published October 16, 2010
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September 13, 2019
In Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California, Daniel HoSang explores the way the predominantly white electorate of the state has voted negatively or against a handful of ballot issues dealing closely with racial or progressive issues in the state during a sixty year period from just after 1945 to the early 2000s.
And why–the student may ask–should we care about a handful of ‘old’ voting issues in California? HoSang explains that ballot measures are especially useful for thinking about the state’s role in the inequalities found between its public schools, healthcare, employment and other areas ‘separating’ people of color from wealthier whites due to the way that voting publicizes a particular type of conversation on these issues:
"Ballot measures…especially those that receive widespread public attention, create public spectacles where competing political interests necessarily seek to shape public consciousness and meaning."
Put another way: materials like campaign rhetoric, opinion articles, television commercials and other instruments used to support the passage or defeat of certain ballot issues can show the way voting doesn’t ‘just express‘ the will of an electorate, but how the process leading up to election day can actually create and develop certain perspectives about what a place like California is, and more importantly, about who California is and who it belongs to.
"Because the instruments of direct democracy by definition are intended to advance the will of “the people,”…organized groups and interests must always make their claim in populist rather than partisan terms, thereby defining the very meaning of the common good."
In other words, for HoSang, as anyone familiar with the 2016 Presidential Election should be able to recall, voting issues have a very particular–at times even “nasty”–way of telling voters about “who we are,” what our values are–or what they should be–and how we should act on those values with our votes.
HoSang further contends that the “sensibilities” or logic which the voting issues of Racial Propositions make their appeals to are voters’ “political whiteness.” The phrase “political whiteness” has layered meanings, but essentially, throughout his book it means a degree of privilege and status for white voters that’s not only maintained but also expounded on by voting issues:
"[Racial Propositions] draws from and extends both George Lipsitz’s observations about the ‘possessive investment in whiteness’ and Cheryl Harris’s critical account of ‘whiteness as property.’ Whiteness, Lipsitz argues is ‘possessed’ both literally in the form of material rewards and resources afforded to those recognized as white as well as figuratively through the ‘psychological wages’ of status and social recognition detailed by W.E.B. Du Bois."
Stated more simply, HoSang claims that “whiteness” in the United States isn’t simply a “fixed” identity, where if you’re white you view yourself as white in a “static” or “unchanging” way, but that “whiteness” is highly impressionable, that is, capable of transforming due to external factors like advertising, propagandizing, and voting.
As HoSang takes readers through the first dozen or so pages of Racial Propositions, then, rather than simply restating the term, the author arrests and interrogates scores of materials left by different voting issues in California. The campaigns for Fair Employment, Fair Housing, or the effort to Desegregate Public Schools in California are just a few of the voting issues he discusses, in which he exposes the logic of “political whiteness” at play in the efforts by organizations like the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Realtors Association (CREA), the Parents Associations and other groups that come together to defeat these measures.
That’s right. Did you know that in 1946, voters in California decided against protections for workers facing discrimination in hiring? Or, did you know that in 1964, voters in California decided against protections for non-white residents looking for a home in the state? Did you know that in 1979, California voters decided against racial integration at our schools when they canceled the state’s busing program?
In Los Angeles alone, parents voted by a margin of 73% to put an end to the busing program in the city, which was only instituted in 1977 and thus barely getting off the ground.
The vote against desegregating schools was passed through an ordinance known as Proposition 1, and put an end to “mandatory” busing in 1980 (which, of course, was just a few years before my parents would arrive from Latin-America alongside many other Central-American and Asian people. Can anyone say, awkward?).
On the issue of school integration, HoSang points out that placing an end to a program whose stated goal was the integration of the races in the state’s public classrooms was not easy; it required a sophisticated deployment of a language of “racial innocence” which sought to ‘pass the buck’ or responsibility of “fixing” racism onto the desks of the state and away from the children of ‘innocent’ [white] parents:
"[Supporters of Proposition 1] held that because white parents and students did not intentionally create the second-class schools to which most racial minorities were consigned nor explicitly support segregated schools as a matter of principle, they could not be compelled to participate in the schools’ improvement."
In other words, in the same way that today the Trump administration likes to argue that the refugee crisis in Central-America should be some other state’s–perhaps Mexico’s–problem, opponents of the school-busing program in late seventies California argued that mixing their white children with Black and Brown kids was unfairly burdening them with a job that was supposed to the state or federal government’s to do. That is, whenever the state or federal government would get to it. Perhaps never, even, but the point being the same: it was not the parents’ responsibility to account for or address inequality in the state. They were “innocent.”
But the gift of Racial Propositions is that no matter what the reader may make of the author’s argument on political whiteness, the book is an exhilarating page-turner for anyone interested in a political history of “The Golden State.” This is due in no small part to HoSang’s unsparingly sharp, saber-like writing skills. For his part, the author recognizes none other than James Baldwin as a key influence on his analytical framework:
"Whiteness was for Baldwin 'absolutely, a moral choice,' an identity derived from and constructed through a set of political convictions. It was by inhabiting a particular political subjectivity—one that rested upon a series of destructive assumptions—that one became white. To embrace the myth of whiteness, he argued, was to 'believe, as no child believes, in the dream of safety'; that one could insist on an inalienable and permanent protection from vulnerability."
By the closing pages of Racial Propositions, HoSang's analysis also makes clear why our political discussions today need to abate a conception of 'liberal' California which still dominates the vox populi leading up to 2020: that because California is already a "minority majority" state, it offers a glimpse into the "progressive" future of America through, since the country's "browning" is supposed to 'liberalize' it.
HoSang notes that if the “majority minority” or "browning" scenario, which became the case in California nearly two decades ago, is what progressives should hinge their hopes on for a more liberal future in the United States, they better look at the numbers:
"…in 2000, as California became the first large “majority minority” state in the nation, white voters still constituted 72 percent of the electorate."
And so, as one blogger put it to his fellow readers and historians following another election where that same “majority minority” was hardly seen throughout election day:
"…the current inequality between white voters rates and those of people of color when considering the larger voter eligibility pool of the latter group in Los Angeles and California is more than just unfortunate, it’s something of a public safety concern."
J.T.
And why–the student may ask–should we care about a handful of ‘old’ voting issues in California? HoSang explains that ballot measures are especially useful for thinking about the state’s role in the inequalities found between its public schools, healthcare, employment and other areas ‘separating’ people of color from wealthier whites due to the way that voting publicizes a particular type of conversation on these issues:
"Ballot measures…especially those that receive widespread public attention, create public spectacles where competing political interests necessarily seek to shape public consciousness and meaning."
Put another way: materials like campaign rhetoric, opinion articles, television commercials and other instruments used to support the passage or defeat of certain ballot issues can show the way voting doesn’t ‘just express‘ the will of an electorate, but how the process leading up to election day can actually create and develop certain perspectives about what a place like California is, and more importantly, about who California is and who it belongs to.
"Because the instruments of direct democracy by definition are intended to advance the will of “the people,”…organized groups and interests must always make their claim in populist rather than partisan terms, thereby defining the very meaning of the common good."
In other words, for HoSang, as anyone familiar with the 2016 Presidential Election should be able to recall, voting issues have a very particular–at times even “nasty”–way of telling voters about “who we are,” what our values are–or what they should be–and how we should act on those values with our votes.
HoSang further contends that the “sensibilities” or logic which the voting issues of Racial Propositions make their appeals to are voters’ “political whiteness.” The phrase “political whiteness” has layered meanings, but essentially, throughout his book it means a degree of privilege and status for white voters that’s not only maintained but also expounded on by voting issues:
"[Racial Propositions] draws from and extends both George Lipsitz’s observations about the ‘possessive investment in whiteness’ and Cheryl Harris’s critical account of ‘whiteness as property.’ Whiteness, Lipsitz argues is ‘possessed’ both literally in the form of material rewards and resources afforded to those recognized as white as well as figuratively through the ‘psychological wages’ of status and social recognition detailed by W.E.B. Du Bois."
Stated more simply, HoSang claims that “whiteness” in the United States isn’t simply a “fixed” identity, where if you’re white you view yourself as white in a “static” or “unchanging” way, but that “whiteness” is highly impressionable, that is, capable of transforming due to external factors like advertising, propagandizing, and voting.
As HoSang takes readers through the first dozen or so pages of Racial Propositions, then, rather than simply restating the term, the author arrests and interrogates scores of materials left by different voting issues in California. The campaigns for Fair Employment, Fair Housing, or the effort to Desegregate Public Schools in California are just a few of the voting issues he discusses, in which he exposes the logic of “political whiteness” at play in the efforts by organizations like the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Realtors Association (CREA), the Parents Associations and other groups that come together to defeat these measures.
That’s right. Did you know that in 1946, voters in California decided against protections for workers facing discrimination in hiring? Or, did you know that in 1964, voters in California decided against protections for non-white residents looking for a home in the state? Did you know that in 1979, California voters decided against racial integration at our schools when they canceled the state’s busing program?
In Los Angeles alone, parents voted by a margin of 73% to put an end to the busing program in the city, which was only instituted in 1977 and thus barely getting off the ground.
The vote against desegregating schools was passed through an ordinance known as Proposition 1, and put an end to “mandatory” busing in 1980 (which, of course, was just a few years before my parents would arrive from Latin-America alongside many other Central-American and Asian people. Can anyone say, awkward?).
On the issue of school integration, HoSang points out that placing an end to a program whose stated goal was the integration of the races in the state’s public classrooms was not easy; it required a sophisticated deployment of a language of “racial innocence” which sought to ‘pass the buck’ or responsibility of “fixing” racism onto the desks of the state and away from the children of ‘innocent’ [white] parents:
"[Supporters of Proposition 1] held that because white parents and students did not intentionally create the second-class schools to which most racial minorities were consigned nor explicitly support segregated schools as a matter of principle, they could not be compelled to participate in the schools’ improvement."
In other words, in the same way that today the Trump administration likes to argue that the refugee crisis in Central-America should be some other state’s–perhaps Mexico’s–problem, opponents of the school-busing program in late seventies California argued that mixing their white children with Black and Brown kids was unfairly burdening them with a job that was supposed to the state or federal government’s to do. That is, whenever the state or federal government would get to it. Perhaps never, even, but the point being the same: it was not the parents’ responsibility to account for or address inequality in the state. They were “innocent.”
But the gift of Racial Propositions is that no matter what the reader may make of the author’s argument on political whiteness, the book is an exhilarating page-turner for anyone interested in a political history of “The Golden State.” This is due in no small part to HoSang’s unsparingly sharp, saber-like writing skills. For his part, the author recognizes none other than James Baldwin as a key influence on his analytical framework:
"Whiteness was for Baldwin 'absolutely, a moral choice,' an identity derived from and constructed through a set of political convictions. It was by inhabiting a particular political subjectivity—one that rested upon a series of destructive assumptions—that one became white. To embrace the myth of whiteness, he argued, was to 'believe, as no child believes, in the dream of safety'; that one could insist on an inalienable and permanent protection from vulnerability."
By the closing pages of Racial Propositions, HoSang's analysis also makes clear why our political discussions today need to abate a conception of 'liberal' California which still dominates the vox populi leading up to 2020: that because California is already a "minority majority" state, it offers a glimpse into the "progressive" future of America through, since the country's "browning" is supposed to 'liberalize' it.
HoSang notes that if the “majority minority” or "browning" scenario, which became the case in California nearly two decades ago, is what progressives should hinge their hopes on for a more liberal future in the United States, they better look at the numbers:
"…in 2000, as California became the first large “majority minority” state in the nation, white voters still constituted 72 percent of the electorate."
And so, as one blogger put it to his fellow readers and historians following another election where that same “majority minority” was hardly seen throughout election day:
"…the current inequality between white voters rates and those of people of color when considering the larger voter eligibility pool of the latter group in Los Angeles and California is more than just unfortunate, it’s something of a public safety concern."
J.T.
February 14, 2016
This book could also be entitled "Political Whiteness: What it is and why it matters." By exploring several seemingly racist direct-democracy spurred legislation in California, Daniel Martinez HoSang exposes that California is not as liberal as it boasts itself to be. He then attempts to explain why this is.
A lot of HoSang's argument comes down to what he calls "political whiteness," whereby people politically act as if they have had long-standing integrationist white beliefs. Although many of the examples are interesting, and the stories of the legislation are plots of their own, HoSang's explanations don't go far enough. The reader is ultimately left with an in-depth summary of several Californian propositions, not sure what to think about them.
Throughout the volume, HoSang makes the assumption that all propositions he discusses are intrinsically racist. With this, he goes on to discuss the people behind the propositions and their actions without proving why the legislation is racist. The reader is left confused.
Further, HoSang's vague definition of "political whiteness" allows it to be applied to all examples without question; however, HoSang never makes the necessary distinctions between true racist behavior, nationalism, class conflict, and political whiteness. Thus, upon finishing the book, the reader is left with knowledge of propositions, insight into their seemingly racist creators, and a seeming explanation that they are racist because of political whiteness. The lack of depth that the term "political whiteness" holds is truly unsatisfying.
Although it is evident that the presented information has been meticulously researched, HoSang's argument remains weak and he is ultimately unable to successfully deliver his point.
A lot of HoSang's argument comes down to what he calls "political whiteness," whereby people politically act as if they have had long-standing integrationist white beliefs. Although many of the examples are interesting, and the stories of the legislation are plots of their own, HoSang's explanations don't go far enough. The reader is ultimately left with an in-depth summary of several Californian propositions, not sure what to think about them.
Throughout the volume, HoSang makes the assumption that all propositions he discusses are intrinsically racist. With this, he goes on to discuss the people behind the propositions and their actions without proving why the legislation is racist. The reader is left confused.
Further, HoSang's vague definition of "political whiteness" allows it to be applied to all examples without question; however, HoSang never makes the necessary distinctions between true racist behavior, nationalism, class conflict, and political whiteness. Thus, upon finishing the book, the reader is left with knowledge of propositions, insight into their seemingly racist creators, and a seeming explanation that they are racist because of political whiteness. The lack of depth that the term "political whiteness" holds is truly unsatisfying.
Although it is evident that the presented information has been meticulously researched, HoSang's argument remains weak and he is ultimately unable to successfully deliver his point.
April 21, 2017
Brilliantly written and meticulously researched. This book is a game changer and a must read for anyone who buys into the idea that we’re living in a post racial society.
June 13, 2020
Liberals are trash! Really though this is a good look at how liberals in California over and over again accommodated racist/fascist framings of issues like immigration, housing discrimination, and affirmative action ... appealing to "political whiteness" above all else in order to win elections by appealing to the mythical swing voter / moderate Republican. Also history I never knew before about how Democrats like Dianne Fienstein in the early 1990s went super anti-immigrant / restrictionist before even people like Pete Wilson did.
January 20, 2020
The California Ballot proposition system began as a progressive idea championed by Hiram Johnson before World War I. Over the years, the proposition system has been used effectively by conservatives and right-wing populists. This book looks specifically at how high profile California propositions were used in the 1990s to roll-back and inhibit civil rights progress in the state.
The book looks at how conservatives would cloak their white supremacist positions in the language of equality and fairness cynically exploiting the average votes failure to learn more than a couple sentences about what these propositions would actually do. The racist implications of these propositions were often hidden in the fine print. The opponents were also afraid to call out the racist attributes because this might rile up the huge sector of California voters who were predominately white.
The battles lines in these propositions were often fought over less inflammatory aspects. The infamous anti-Mexican immigrant proposition 187 was not fought over the principle issue of Mexican illegal immigrants supposedly flooding into California. Both sides agreed this was a problem. Instead the liberals who stood against the proposition argued that the draconian solution of education, healthcare and welfare to undocumented Mexicans, was counterproductive. Unfortunately, the voters wanted something done about the problem and by agreeing that the issue was real, this gave license for the initiative to be taken seriously. This and similar propositions were passed with more than 60% of the vote.
The book digs into the messages and strategies from both sides of these campaigns and has insightful things to say about the mostly white liberals who adopted the conservative sides framing of the issues. But the book doesn't consider these propositions within the larger context of the California initiative system which is a powerful tool to bring change to the state. Nor does it consider the political culture and history of California that surrounded these propositions. As a result some of its insights have little weight because they are based on such a narrow set of circumstances.
The book looks at how conservatives would cloak their white supremacist positions in the language of equality and fairness cynically exploiting the average votes failure to learn more than a couple sentences about what these propositions would actually do. The racist implications of these propositions were often hidden in the fine print. The opponents were also afraid to call out the racist attributes because this might rile up the huge sector of California voters who were predominately white.
The battles lines in these propositions were often fought over less inflammatory aspects. The infamous anti-Mexican immigrant proposition 187 was not fought over the principle issue of Mexican illegal immigrants supposedly flooding into California. Both sides agreed this was a problem. Instead the liberals who stood against the proposition argued that the draconian solution of education, healthcare and welfare to undocumented Mexicans, was counterproductive. Unfortunately, the voters wanted something done about the problem and by agreeing that the issue was real, this gave license for the initiative to be taken seriously. This and similar propositions were passed with more than 60% of the vote.
The book digs into the messages and strategies from both sides of these campaigns and has insightful things to say about the mostly white liberals who adopted the conservative sides framing of the issues. But the book doesn't consider these propositions within the larger context of the California initiative system which is a powerful tool to bring change to the state. Nor does it consider the political culture and history of California that surrounded these propositions. As a result some of its insights have little weight because they are based on such a narrow set of circumstances.
November 16, 2012
I read this for an African-American history class about a year ago. Definitely dry reading material unless you are acutely interested in racial politics of post-WW2 California politics.
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