Banning racial data collection protects private discrimination from scrutiny

Evidence

The Racial Privacy Initiative was a ballot proposition placed before the California electorate in the November election of 2003. It was intended to restrict state government from collecting any racially identified data save principally for criminal justice investigations (police profiling) or certain sorts of medical research. It was designed to make it impossible to track ongoing racial discrimination across a wide range of social indices, including residential, educational, and employment. While the proposition failed significantly to garner electoral support, its terms of conception should be noted. The Racial Privacy Initiative was not a proposal to outlaw racial discrimination, to address past or to redress structural racism. It was, to put it bluntly, the “protection of private racial discrimination initiative,” the undertaking not just to privatize racism but to protect ongoing discrimination in private, to restrict it from scrutiny and from intervention. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1767

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s threatened-privilege mechanism research: ending racial data collection is a policy route to status-threat mitigation that removes the evidence base for documenting discrimination. — connects to: California’s 2003 Racial Privacy Initiative sought to shield private racial discrimination from state scrutiny — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1767; Erasing racial categories from public accounting also erases the discrimination they record — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1772; Eliminating racial data collection protects rather than ends racial discrimination (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Eliminating racial data collection protects rather than ends racial discrimination #corroborates (0.95)
• Refusing to count by race masks ongoing structural racial restriction #corroborates (0.90)
• Privatizing race frees racism to circulate unchecked in private life #corroborates (0.90)
• Privacy law enabled racial privilege to persist while formally denying it #corroborates (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 82
• California’s Racial Privacy Initiative would have blocked tracking of discrimination data #exemplifies (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1767
• Racial discrimination in service encounters requires corroboration to expose #exemplifies (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1489
• Racial analysis must extend beyond explicitly repressive cases to muted ones #expands (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 809
• Reducing racial disparities in prosecution requires offense-specific, decision-point-level data #expands (0.75) — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 589
• Line prosecutors believe colorblindness eliminates racially biased decisions #corroborates (0.75)