Get Used to It: Ep. 27, "Affirmative Action"

my [Applause] [Music] so [Music] hi i'm sheila james kewell welcome to get used to it our internationally famous show talk show on gay and lesbian issues today we're going to talk about a topic that is pretty much on everybody's mind and if it isn't it soon will be because it's getting more publicity in the papers and on through the media than anything else and that is of course affirmative action when we talk about affirmative action often we talk about uh people of color talk about women you don't hear very many people talking about what this impact what the impact of this uh initiative or this issue is on our gay and lesbian community as a whole of course our community and includes people of color and women so i thought it might be interesting today to bring together three wonderful people uh the greatest brains on any subject but especially on this one and i'd like you to meet my guests today this is valerie wagner who is the co-chair of the black gay and lesbian leadership forum welcome val thank you zeke zeidler who just last march was elected to the redondo beach school board got more votes than anybody congratulations zeke and welcome thank you and jay fong who is the chief policy analyst at the los angeles gay and lesbian community services center welcome jay i'm really glad you're here today we this is going to be a slightly different show on affirmative action than i think people are watching around the country and we are seeing around the country everybody's looking at this so-called civil rights initiative that hasn't even qualified for the ballot yet but everybody's talking about it there have already been 16 editorials against it in california newspapers our community however hasn't really had our first forum about it i don't think as a community so maybe it'll start here so let me ask you val to start with you um what do you think that the the issue really is here and what what do you think about the initiative the civil rights initiative yeah the so-called civil rights initiative called yeah that's that's actually probably the best way to put it um i think the issue really is you know about trying to turn back the hands of time if you will turn back the clock on a lot of events that people of color and women have been able to make because of things like affirmative action that have been in place and one of the things that that i talk with people a lot about is the naming of the initiative i think that's probably the key to its potential success and of course when people hear civil rights automatically you think you know this is going to make something fair and just and equal for everyone but i think it's more important to look at the potential effects that the civil rights initiative will have so i guess in a sense i have to applaud the writers of the initiative for you know the tactic that they're using and trying to get this piece of legislation passed you mean applaud them for being so sneaky well for sure yeah for showing themselves for what they really are um and i you know i think you know i believe in giving credit where credit is due if you will so i will have to give them that but hopefully people will take a real close look at exactly what this piece of legislation is going to do i think affirmative action is something that has been needed and is still needed in this day and age we've never had a level playing field and certainly taking away measures that are that were set in place to guarantee a level playing field is not the solution to some of the problems that people may find with affirmative action of course the critique of it is and i think the uh the approach of the initiative is to appeal really to that sort of yearning that i think is in every american's heart for equality and fairness and they call it equal opportunity etc so uh what the initiative essentially says is that the government cannot make any decisions either to to disadvantage or to give preference on the basis of race or gender and that has a lot of i think appeal to people but do you think people really understand affirmative action i don't think they do uh personally i think a lot of people and in conversations that i've had with co-workers a lot of people want to equate quotas with affirmative action and you know i'd be one of the first to say that i think quotas are wrong i mean i think the notion of hiring someone just because they're a person of color or just because they're a woman is wrong because that's a disadvantage that disadvantages everyone um and you know of course i wasn't i wasn't a writer of the original civil rights deal or any of the civil definitive action um legislation but i don't think that was the intent of affirmative action i believe that its intent was to give everyone an equal chance which is the furthest thing from quotas i think that exists but a lot of people want to i guess in their attempts to find fault with affirmative action align it with quotas which i think is a bad practice and i believe affirmative action were really given the opportunity to work and if people really got behind and understood what it was supposed to be about i don't think we'd have you know the issue coming up in i guess in 1996 potentially on the ballot in california or some of the issues or or the attempts that are being made to strike down affirmative action on the national level zeke what do you think i mean it's it seems to me that everybody says they're against discrimination i mean everybody on both sides of this ballot issue they don't believe in discrimination they believe there should be anti-discrimination laws but they think affirmative action is somehow going too far just to fight discrimination well i think that most people don't understand what affirmative action is i think that's a basic aspect of it and by creating this this law people are attempting to play off of the fears that people have i work a lot with students doing human relations trainings dealing with uh racism and sexism and it's very interesting the fear that white students out there have and white adults of of their own personal survival issues and and how hard it's going to be for them to make it in society and get a job so they hear what what is being said that affirmative action is and it creates fear in them without realizing what it really is without realizing what the supreme court decisions have said that it has to you have to be attempting to remedy specific discrimination it has to be nearly tailored to remedy that specific history of discrimination in the ways that you're creating the laws and most people don't realize that and they think quotas and and these other aspects so i think it's a fear-based attempt to uh to get people to think that that's what's really going on when it isn't well but beyond what the supreme court said about the ability to remedy discrimination has to be with in each particular case if a city wants to use it as a remedy uh do you have to show that there's been discrimination in the city but what about the federal government's contract uh set set-asides for instance or admissions in the universities and colleges i mean this is an area this is the mythology out there in society is that you if you lose your job well it's because some women or some people of color got your job not the failed economic uh policies of the government no no please don't look at those you're losing your job because they're getting them or if you've got a 4-0 and you know some great s.a.t and you don't get into ucla you have to go to riverside or instead oh well some person of color with lower grades got in and often there are people with lower grades who get in don't you think that some of those fears have been sort of borne out though by the way we've approached it well i think that in some ways yes but in other ways no some of the set-asides people don't understand set-asides they think that you know you're going to hire someone who's not qualified at all rather than someone who is qualified for the job or contracting out with someone who is qualified to do the job california california has a goal of at least 15 percent of the money going towards women and people of color while over 40 percent of the workforce is either people of color or women so the goal that's there isn't even realistic to meet the realities of our society and who makes up our society so people think oh these set-asides are going to bring all these people up and take over my job when it's really just the minimal amount of an effort on the part of our government to at least bring up those people who are qualified and give them a chance the ones who usually wouldn't get the job even though they're qualified because someone else has their own stereotypes and prejudice of of what they can and can't accomplish we want to talk about who's really been getting preferences over the last couple of centuries in in a minute but jay i want to ask you just sort of in the introductory way what what do you think's going on here zeke is absolutely right we're talking about fears that people have and the basic perception that at least some people have that they're not being being treated fairly i think what's interesting is when you mention the fact that there are people who are out there saying you know if i had just been an african-american or i had just been asian or latino i would have gotten into such and such a school or i would have gotten that job and on some levels you said that there may be truth to that but by the same token it is also just as valid to say if your sats were higher you would have gotten in if you had been smarter you would have gotten in because the reality about affirmative action is it is not one thing like your color or your gender it is a whole constellation of issues that we look at trying to allocate scarce resources whether it's a job or a place in a graduate school or a place at a good place like ucla to allocate spaces like that in a way that is just and is fair and that reflects the needs of california and for that matter the whole country and i think that it's people's failure to understand that it is about not so much strict equality but but fairness and and balance that makes the difference between why people are so angry about this because they think it's just a reserved place and that because you were black because you were asian you got it and i didn't and i think that what the the work that's involved over the next months over this campaign is to educate people about how this works how affirmative action has done great things to leverage diversity in this incredibly diverse state of california and has not hurt us at all and i think that's the focus for the for the energy over the next few months well there's a lot of different myths i think that are created about all of us i mean we'll talk about our community and what we but there are a lot of connections in terms of the way this tool is being used and one of the reasons why i think we'll we'll talk later about why we should be worried about it as well but one of the myths is that there is such a thing as merit and that if you're going to get a job the qualifications for the job are this i remember when i was at ucla the qualifications for a secretary would be a bachelor's degree now or even a master's if you had a master's you'd get to be a secretary and there was no connection at all between your old english literature bachelors and your ability to be a secretary but it tended to because the graduation rate of whites was so much higher uh in in those days and still it tended to mean that all secretaries hired for the most part were white when we finally got the university to look at real qualifications for the job not just imagined ones you know could you type could you do this etc etc all of a sudden the workforce got a lot more diverse because we were matching up we were you know taking away the sort of myth about the graduate being the best secretary there's lots of other myths about they create myths of incompetence for instance about people of color used to be even as much about women though it that's a little less now i remember the days we were told you can't have a woman broadcasting the news because women aren't credible and no one will believe the news if it's read by a woman now that sounds like 19th century to my students now but it's not very long ago so i think that they there's a lot of this creation of of myth um i wonder though if we can talk a minute about who's really been privileged i mean that that's another myth about uh about things i mean if you say zeke 15 of the jobs or of the contracts are set asides and what percentage is not going as set aside [Laughter] well and even then they make 30 percent the set aside just to even get near that 15 goal which is really sad so why do they need set asides though you need set asides because people in our society don't realize that they get privilege i think that i as a white person it's very hard for me to admit that i get certain privileges in our society and um the only thing and to admit that maybe i end up bonding better with whites or i might feel more comfortable in an interview for whatever of my own hidden stereotypes with the white person i'm interviewing it's hard for me to admit that those things exist or to identify them that they exist and it's really a way to make people realize that there are people out there who are qualified to bring up to be hiring to be working with and that in the past those people haven't been hired even though they're qualified and they should be plus a lot of just the whole history of discrimination in our society the various ways that people have been kept down and people don't realize that there still is that lasting impact that there are different types that we still get a wise our society that we still have economic economic uh patterns in where people live in our society that then are also racial and also affect the type of education that's being offered in those communities and that it really is connected we don't like we don't like to say it but it really is connected the poorer communities don't get the same type of education levels the black communities and latino communities don't get the same type of education levels because of what it is that our society chooses to emphasize and where we choose to put the money i think with education hopefully people can understand exactly what affirmative action is supposed to be about and sort of get it away from you know a lot of their stereotypes or their fears it is a tough one because it does pose the notion the american notion that if you work really hard you get there on your own merit and so you want to have some way of measuring merit right and they think well seniority is one way to measure merit you've been there longer than anyone else and if you haven't screwed up and gotten fired then you deserve the promotion because you've been there promote from within all that kind of stuff right and just considering that there was discrimination back then people say yeah but why should i suffer you know i didn't discriminate against you and now i'm not getting that job and it's that zero-sum game approach when i went to harvard we were told we were taking the place of a man and that was a bad thing why i'm not exactly certain and it's true we were taking the place that a man would have had if the discrimination against women continued so the question is what do we do do we keep on advantaging men by discriminating or do we stop discriminating and let people in on whatever the merit is which still doesn't get us to the proper diversity in society depending on what we call merit and i think that's really the issue sheila because of course it depends on what is in the equation from merit one of the examples that i like using with the people that i discuss this with is let's say you're imagining a dental school admissions program and there's a bunch of people who are applying to get into dental school we know that you look at grades we know that you look at your place in your class and your exams and all these other things but let's say that there was a test for nimble handedness and we somehow thought that nimble hands make a better dentist therefore if we could take a test for nimble handedness the results on that would be an issue of merit because presumably nimble hands make better dentists it is also true in our society today whether we like it or not that the color of your skin makes you a better servant to your community or to the people that you work with your clients your your patients in america today an african-american can better serve in many ways in certain contexts people in this community they are better able to understand the people where these people are coming from so the result is that in fact the person's race is an issue of merit it is part of the constellation of things that you look at to determine whether this person or not should be allocated a scarce resource so in fact it's part of the equation it's not that race is something that's not merit it's in fact a part of who you are it it describes what kind of service you can give it describes what kind of communities you have access to the same way that if you're a woman you you have the ability to understand better to reach out better and understand what those needs are with the communities you're serving so i actually think that the the discussion is kind of odd because what happens is that they take race out and say there's all these things that are merit like grades and place in class and then there's this thing called race and gender and in fact i see them as one and the same thing they are a list of things that you look at when you're trying to hire when you're trying to admit when you're trying to do purchasing all of those things go into this and i think we need to we need to bring the discussion to that level so that people begin to understand what it means to have this level of diversity because it's really not a question of of of having these tokens running around it really is about leveraging really using and utilizing the the the diversity that's around us because we have a diverse community and you need diverse people to serve that community still a hard sell jay it's a tough one i mean it is because again as as they say with the military and it's changing now but they used to say about the military in terms of race as well it's almost as if they say we don't need to be diverse to get the job done we can get the job done with all men or we can get the job done with all white men so why do we need to be diverse and we'll create the mythology that if we are diverse we will be less competent whatever our business is so it it they say well why do you need people of color to be dentists you know we that's not what it's about that kind of racial sensitivity or should they only be dentists to people in their own community i mean does that mean they don't get a light should never be a dentist in beverly hills so in a way you're right that is we should be counting more things as qualifications at harvard they call it the sparkle factor you might not get in with a 4-0 in a perfect lsat because you're a nerd so that goes to the question of what it is that makes a good whatever it is well zeke i know you went to law school because i was one of your professors and so i know that and besides you have a jd so i assume you went to law school it's sort of like what is it that you would look for in an in to admit to a law school in terms of turning out what you would consider to be a really competent attorney would you look at more than grades analysis i'd have to look at um if they've had any types of things that i know i was an english lit major and one thing i thought that was positive is that it was critical thinking so i'd look at what things were they were they active in in terms of critical thinking in terms of speaking skills and presentation specific writing not just you know the grades but how do they write because you definitely have to have strong skills in that area and i'd also look and look at what area they want to go into of the law because there are areas that are underserved in terms of people interested in the law most of the people i went to law school with went to law school because they were going to make money and you need more of the people who are going to go to law school because they're going to try and make a difference well it was also the fact that the experience in law school and the experience in the workplace and the experience in any organization is a question of all the people who are there and when i was teaching it would it would also be the case that we would want people to contribute their life experience because the law and i'm sure this is true in medical school and dental school in any kind of professional school engineering that you want people to be more connected to to a human thing and not so remote from it as lawyers are have generally in the past been trained to be and that means you want them to connect to life experience so that when you're teaching a class on as i do gender and law if there's no women in the class you can't teach a class on gender and law because no one is speaking about the experience of women and so if you're teaching khan law constitutional law how can you teach it without a diverse student body there's no one to talk about the experience of of discrimination i mean there's no reality based there society is not you know one race or one gender i mean we don't we don't exist in this this you know one ideal if you will society it's many things you know and i sometimes i think i think the word diversity gets kind of overworked i'm not sure exactly what everybody means when they say diversity or when they use that term but you know if if we existed in a society that was you know we're all white men or we're all white women or all black women then okay fine we have only black engineers or black doctors or black lawyers or we have only white you know male whatever but you know the reality is that is just not the way that it is and i think if if we strive for making sure that you know all the professions that that are represented have people that cover the diverse society that we live in um then you know it's kind of like a jpl we sort of you know try to make sure that the employees represent the demographics of the area now of course that changes depending on whether you want to consider the area as pasadena or locking out of flint ridge or you want to look at los angeles county but and i think there's a real effort at least most of the time there's a real effort on the part of management to make sure that we do have engineers that you know speak to or can speak to the community that we represent even though we don't really have to interact with the community that much but what i hear you saying is that there there is a sense of fairness that's important that there's a sense of balance that's important what if it isn't important to a bunch of people i mean the world worked fine for white men before we started there were always people of color in the society there were always women but we had a fabulous hierarchy so that those people couldn't get those jobs and couldn't go to those schools and that was working fine but then white men i think a lot during the civil rights movement pressed by african americans to begin with their conscience was uh turned on in the in this most recent civil rights movement and they said you know you're right it's more important to do justice than to have unfair advantage and a lot of white people got involved and said we'll work at this level to try to open it up because we're the only ones there and it certainly they were not the heroes of the civil rights movement but they had to open some doors and their consciences were you know were touched um but there's an awful lot of people now that hate the loss of that privilege and it feels to me like this roll back this this uh sort of payback for these gains is the anger is at what they feel was lost and can be regained well you said something earlier about you know if if a white man is losing his job it's because a person of color or a woman is taking his job well could it be because he's no longer qualified to do that job now i don't think people want to look at it from that standpoint i don't think that every white person that's displaced from a job you know is solely because they want to try and put a person of color or a woman in there well but that also says that was his job to begin with and he took his place right i mean that's the attitude and that i think is what the fallacy is and why it's a backlash well the old boy network is is very you know very strong very much alive uh and and will tend to be and i think people are having a hard time giving up that you know it's this notion of one of the things that we talk about in the community is you know men have got to share the power well sharing doesn't necessarily work so now it's about you've got to give up the power you know and if you're not willing to give it up then we're going to take it because it's not yours to sort of hoard in the first place anyway no one made you king or queen of the world and said you know you will be bestowed with the power and you know do with it as you see fit and i think people of color and women are starting to come into the real the self-realization that you know i deserve and i'm going to take a place at the table and it's not you know if you don't invite me that's okay i'm coming anyway and you need to be prepared for that and so now you know as as the president so eloquently put it the angry white man is is up in arms you know because he's working twice as hard and making less than he did a year ago well women and people of color have always made less than white men so if if white men are angry because they're working twice as hard and making less than what are we supposed to be you know so can i just interject something i think one thing that's interesting is we talk about the benefits of this from academics and from hiring but take a look at how it's good for business i mean one of the largest employers in the state of california our phone system pacific bell pacific telesis they've got an extremely diverse workforce extremely they take great pride in what they've done with their workforce and it's not to say that they are a perfect institution but what's amazing is that they have really worked to diversify their workforce to advertise to reach out to hire and what they've discovered is that they have opened up new areas of business in the latino community in the african-american community businesses and people and services that they were never selling before i mean so if you go beyond one step the issue of opportunity and look in terms of what it's done for business what it's done for california creating opportunities not just to work at pacific bell but for the whole economy that spins out around our technology and the availability of services it's something that you you you it's almost it's very hard to quantify that well yeah you've got a workforce that's very diverse and you had mentioned the question earlier about about set-asides and why do companies and government need to set aside certain numbers of contracts to work with minority and women or businesses i think that that's partly because of the familiarity question because there are so many people who have been in power up there white men let's just say who have been unaccustomed to dealing with people other than those who look like and act like them exactly this says you know get to know a couple of these women entrepreneurs get to know some of these minority businesses and you're going to discover that they are just as competitive they do business just as well and that they can be just as good for your business as anyone else has been i mean that's what we've discovered in the gay and lesbian community isn't it that for those people who know us and when people begin to get to know us because many people they hate gay men and lesbians they don't know any and when you come out of the closet and they realize you've been working alongside them all this time suddenly the light goes on and i think that set aside at least in part one of the benefits of it is that it's a familiarity factor that you begin to understand who we are as a community gay men lesbians women people of color and i think those all those advantages are good for business in california and throughout the country and let me let alone the individual benefit of being able to get in school it's really good for everybody when we when we have businesses that leverage this diversity and create markets white men wait let's we need to take a break now so let's come back again to the uh to continue that thought about sort of our community and the relationship to this and we'll be right back pick up your telephone right now and call the number on your screen find out how you can enrich your family values by learning about your gay children we had no idea what the gay community was like learn how these parents deal with their fears about attending parents flag meeting one of my biggest fears was that i would see someone that i knew call the telephone number on your screen right now and see how these parents have taken themselves to acceptance and beyond because that parent does not know the positives yet about the gay community [Music] [Applause] here's one time it doesn't matter who your neighbor is [Music] here's the other life's too short stop the hate kids trying to survive on the streets today are subjected to an environment of drugs these are some good drugs right here it's gang violence constitution and aids the longer they're out there the greater the risks you as the parent can't possibly want this for your child that ain't cool it's tough being a parent with a teenager nowadays but don't give up don't knock them out work it out together i'm danny glover a message from the la county department of children and family services hi i'm sheila james cuell welcome back to get used to it today we're talking about affirmative action affirmative action in the context of the proposed initiative and also in terms of its impact if any on our community and how we're thinking about it my guest today val wagner zeke zeidler jay fong so we were in the middle of this and i know you were about to say something about on the one hand on the other hand and i cut you off well there are two dynamics that are at work we get conflicting messages at one place we get that we're pitted against each other that it's a person of color who's taking my job and that that's what's going on the other hand we get messages that race shouldn't matter the whole way we deal with race in our society not just affirmative action is that everyone's the same we're the human race and race doesn't matter and that really ignores that people do have different experiences that i as as a white person walk into a store and get treated different than a black person walking into a store i as a man walk into a courtroom and get treated very differently than a woman lawyer walking into the courtroom and and that i sometimes as a man treat that woman differently without necessarily acknowledging it so instead of ignoring that there are those different experiences we need to acknowledge that and and i think that's where a lot of the need for programs like this come from and that's what people don't want to acknowledge is that there are differences and there are differences in our experience well people know there's been discrimination i think we've done a good job about that and they think there should be a remedy and maybe the remedy should be the individual person who themselves are discriminated against should be able to sue the company or the school that didn't let them in something really egregious the problem is that we found that there were a lot of companies that said we don't discriminate we don't discriminate now it just so happens that only white men are qualified for this job and we we only hired qualified people but we don't discriminate so what led us to affirmative action i think was just we had to say well could you demonstrate in any way that you're not discriminating and it was very difficult to show that there was any remedy for the institutional discrimination that had gone on and all these white men who've been in line for so long but so the but the question of the moment i think for us is what has this got to do with our lesbian gay community why should we even be interested in this we don't benefit from affirmative action as a community do we well well personally yes as a black lesbian you know it's kind of hard for me to separate out you know being black in one you know aspect of who i am versus being a woman versus being a lesbian so affirmative action does have a very real impact on my life um and and that sort of encompasses everything that i do and i think the community has you know or should take a vested interest in affirmative action just like you know i felt that we should have gotten a bit more involved with 187 i mean it's if you look at what i call is this anti-human legislation that's going on now or anti-anything that's you know not white male you know we it touches it touches our lives it touches this community in some aspect or another as a woman you know you benefit from women based programs and so if those are taken away you know it takes away or it affects that aspect of who you are you know you can't just separate out and be sheila killed the lesbian you know and forget that your sheila killed a woman and so i think i think this community needs to take a real close look at the language that's being used in 187 it was about you know immigrants or illegal immigrants in this country affirmative action is about people of color and women you know the next group if you will to target is going to be the lesbian and gay community and so we need to get prepared you know and educate ourselves about you know what's potentially coming down the line to affect us if not in one way you know like with 187 or with the civil rights initiative in another very real way you know as far as anti-lesbian gay um initiatives that are you know they're destined for the ballot in california i mean also we're we are targeted in other states yeah exactly so you know what makes california so different what sets us aside it makes us so special i don't think anything does from that standpoint well you're the senior policy analyst at the center jay what do you think about this well i think that valerie hits the point on the head there's a couple of things first of all there's no question in my mind that there are certain elements in our society that are going after the weakest most disenfranchised people in society last year it was immigrants in proposition 187 and many people sat around including people of color saying hey you know not my fight not my issue gay men and lesbians did it people of color did it and sure enough it passed and i was saying to friends of mine at the time you know um it's not oh it's only a matter of time before they get to us and sure enough we are now looking that in 1996 we're looking at ccri the california civil rights initiative and they're coming after people of color and although there may be reasons why in california an initiative may not be the way we're going to see it i just remind everyone in the gay and lesbian community of three words cincinnati colorado and oregon i mean it may or may not happen in california but it's going to happen and we see that talk and that rhetoric all the time and what really does worry me about this is that there is such a mean-spiritedness about going after women and people of color and immigrants and people who with hiv other people like that that um it creates an environment in which people who are different are cheaper it's easier to go after those people it's easier to bash those people and we are seeing a trend now talking about the policy work at the center where we have seen this trend of the numbers going up that for whatever reason the rhetoric coming out of san francisco excuse me sacramento and washington dc is far more hostile and it allows some more marginal people in society to take pot shots at us and i think that that's unsafe it's wrong it's bad for us as a community it's bad for our young people and i really believe that we have to educate ourselves around this issue so that we don't let this slide any further but i don't see a lot of organizing yet in the community do you do you see it i mean at the center we've had discussions just personally um with the various people you know with laurie and others just about what are we going to do is there something we should do we need to step up to the plate we are we are involved in civil rights and and our own well it's really hard because we're here in los angeles there's a lot of complacency people aren't discriminating against as much for being gay and lesbian they're if they are they're able to find somewhere where they're not going to be a lot easier and this is where so people who are out here are comfortable in their lives the people who are discriminated against are in the smaller areas more rural areas where they can't be out about it so they're not discriminated against so they don't and they don't have any ability to come out and deal with it so here locally we have a lot of complacency and i think we saw that when our current governor who's running for president vetoed gay rights legislation suddenly people who had never come out in the street before who have always felt like you know they thought there was anti-discrimination laws in effect because they'd never had problems suddenly felt affected by it suddenly came out in the street but they've gone back to their lives now because they have these complacent lives and and you know you talk about qualifications i'm i'm dealing with it as an elected official now that i ran on a platform you know the three or four people in the world who didn't know i was gay are suddenly complaining that you know they supported me because of my platform but suddenly they found out i'm gay well i haven't changed my platform i haven't changed what i'm talking about as an elected official but suddenly just because they found out i'm gay that disqualifies me and i'm in los angeles it doesn't disqualify you zeke what they're saying is gee if i'd known i might not have voted for you which is the best argument against the level playing field and the you know the equal opportunity garbage that people keep talking about this is not a color blind society this is not a sex blind society it's not a homo blind society thank you randy cunningham and for giving us that word [Laughter] and now a word from dick smarmy uh army sorry slip of the lip um so they're saying to you in essence well of course you did fly right in their face didn't you you got married didn't you i didn't even use that word oh i'm sorry yeah and we had a ceremony that they would have had to work real hard to find out even happen but suddenly you know they consider it to have you know that's bad enough the fact that i had a private thing with family and friends showing my commitment to someone i've been in a relationship with for five years who who we commit were committed i mean it's interesting he comes to school board meetings and watches he's the only significant other of any school board member who supports me who comes to events with me and in some ways we're more visible as a family than any of the other school board members yet there's something negative about us deciding to make it very clear and official to each other and and to the community that that we are two people who are committed to each other but you and jay also have been committed to really to civil rights issues i mean i'm always taken by the fact that you guys always show up one of the very f two of the very few men who show up to the scwu dinner for instance which is which we should do for each other but don't you think there are vast number of white gay men who don't themselves understand the issue of affirmative action and don't know whether they shouldn't maybe be against it because well it doesn't sound quote fair i mean this is the sort of mythology that's being created around it what would you say to them and it's very hard because we face that in our community today we've had organizations leave the statewide lobby group on aids and gay lesbian issues because the group decided that civil rights coalition issues needed our our issues as well i i guess that it's very short-sighted to not realize the connection between the two and to realize that the same fear that was the the what propelled uh proposition 187 and which is propelling the anti-affirmative action is the same fear that's going to be used against us and and that they are connected it's very interesting i don't know why i ended up involved as much as i did in women's issues but i think part of it was that i saw the connection especially between women's issues and gay and lesbian issues and that's that you know it's women are lower in our society and gay men are viewed as being like women and until uh gay men and women can fight the oppression of women we'll never be able to get rid of the homophobia because that's that's the connection between the two and i think you know there's a very visible connection it's a little harder to get the connection with race and and homophobia but it's just trying to make sure that everyone is treated in a way that's fair in our society and that means that all of us need to band together because together we're much more than 50 and if we could all be working together on that and as valerie knows the communities of color here in los angeles have learned that we've had to work together right it is i mean not just in the gay and lesbian issues but just generally we've always had to work together to frankly to muscle our way to the tables and what's interesting about this is that for example right now many people in the gay and lesbian community are concerned with organizing around marriage and whether or not gay men and lesbians are ever going to get the to win the freedom to marry and a mainstream national civil rights organization the japanese american citizens league which is you know for like the naacp is actually kind of conservative in its way but is very committed to civil rights they woke up one day and they realized you know there was a connection between us as japanese americans who were interned who were the subject of anti-miscegenation laws because we couldn't intermarry and these people who are fighting for their rights to marry as well and they saw that connection and they said you know we're going to support this community and i think it puzzles me sometimes that so many people in our community in the gay and lesbian community so many gay white men seem to have trouble reaching and making those connections between our causes as gay men and lesbians and people of color and women and some of these other issues that have been out there that are that are very close to us and yet they there does not seem to be that connection being made and i and i'm wondering whether it's because they are unaccustomed to having to forge by necessity the coalitions that we've had to learn to work and make make happen and so maybe that's it's it's a comfort level thing but i i i it always puzzles me well it's also not a very political community despite the fact that there's an additional mythology now out in society that we're so political and we're so rich that we bring our richness to bear on you know political clout i mean i i had a how rich is this community um but the mythology which also is an aspect of hating us there can't be any poor gay or lesbian or gay people right um and so again it is that we're thought to be very political but my impression of our community is that people are not in order to be political you have to be you have to show that you care about these issues and there's still so much shame even after people come out i think i think there is yeah a lot of people are still fighting with the closet door and i think it's not a political community in los angeles or at least not as political as as i think sometimes we'd like to believe that it is but we we sort of turned into these these one issue you know activists uh when ab101 was struck down everybody was in the streets and really upset and pissed off at pete wilson for doing something that basically he never said he was going to do anyway and and we got really political for that short period of time and then after that was over everybody was like well you know okay kind of like you said earlier it's a very complacent community in los angeles so what does the forum do about it or want to do about it or how's it going about it i want to and and doing are unfortunately um very different i mean the forum opposes you know oppression period you know whether that oppression comes in the form of um proposition 187 you know against illegal immigrants or or in this country or whether it comes in the form of the anti-affirmative action measures or anti-listening initiatives that are around the country what we try to do is educate our community about what's out there being a 501c3 you know we can't get too involved in the political arena but what we believe firmly is that as long as people are given access to the information they can make informed decisions and ultimately of course we want people to vote you know i think the november election showed exactly what non-voting can do right you know the republicans didn't get in because people voted them in they got in because people didn't vote them out um or didn't vote them in so i think you know one of the things that we want to stress particularly to the to the black lesbian gay community is educate yourselves you know get the information read the initiatives and and when election day rolls around you know vote you know go out and exercise a right that you know scores of people have died to make sure that that we have and then we just kind of sit back and oh well you know my vote doesn't count anyway you know so we sort of get caught up in that it's not my battle it's not my issue so why should i care you know they're not talking about me and they count on that they can't not just complacency but also on demoralizing i think all the talk about the angry white man and giving us the impression that there are these vast numbers of energized angry motivated people is also an aspect of creating a myth of this uh you know this mandate for the right wing agenda which i have not found to exist in the larger society but it also demoralizes our community communities of color um a lot you know there were 110 million people voted in 1992. 70 million people voted in 1994. that's 40 million people less who stayed home exactly as you said so and i think they count on that definitely but is it enough just to say gee they're going to come for us next well i think that what the other thing we have to realize though is that we've piggybacked on gay white men have piggybacked on women and people of color the unruly law in the united in california the anti-discrimination law in california doesn't include didn't include sexual orientation and still doesn't it's that we've said well everyone else is listed it's supposed to keep discrimination from happening so they can't discriminate against us either and there's a court that said yeah you're right and the military issue you know because there were the lawsuits that the blacks brought we were able to then be using some of that same logic in the gay and lesbian lawsuits case after case we're using the same strategies that have been successful for other groups and we need to be helping other groups to get to that next level so when it's our turn we can get to that next level so it really is totally interconnected it's interlocked also i think the reason we're not at issue in the affirmative action debate is because there's not affirmative action on the basis of sexual orientation because we haven't actually gotten that far yet but we are being attacked at the level we've achieved that is a local ordinances you you just barely get to a local ordinance boom that's that's where the level of attack's going to be so the the cincinnati and colorado instances are the same as the civil rights initiative in this state it is the same kind of attack on the same sort of progress same kind of rollback that they're looking for so i think we ought to see that we are under attack at the same time even if it's not right here uh in california so what do you think the community should do about this oh there was a big time validating that's an easy question you know i the gay and lesbian center here in los angeles is very interested in the idea of taking a strong position and being a leader for the community because we are looked to for information for education for leadership i i think that it's very important for those of us who believe strongly in this to come out and say exactly what we think about it to talk in forums like this one to make sure that people begin thinking we do have a little lead time on ccri on this initiative uh it's important to begin to to and perhaps it doesn't happen in a mass media campaign i know we love flashy media but you know i mean it really in some senses is um a dining room level conversation where you have to educate people and let people have the freedom to frankly talk to you about what they're afraid of and to learn what it's about and to learn who we are and where our positions come from and to face those and to confront those honestly and openly and i think that if we especially at the center we're trying to put out different types of material that's that's available to people that musters some of the arguments about 187 about ccri about various issues as we put that information out there i hope people will take it and educate themselves and use it i mean maybe i'm being a little bit optimistic on that i mean i i would like to think that people would take it and really read it as an issue that is of concern to all of us um because that's where it spreads i mean this kind of conversation is going to happen at mickey's or at rage it's going to happen over a car barbecue yeah that's where it happens and i think we need to take the effort to do that for those of us who are thinking about it and go forward with that discussion i also think that valerie brought up a good point because just regarding the electoral process itself because with a statewide initiative there's not much you can do other than talk to friends and give money it's too lar too large of an election to do but the other thing that gives the initiative credence is the fact that you have all these elected officials that eventually might jump on the bandwagon so we also need to be working on making sure that you know we're getting involved in those 1996 assembly and congress congressional races to oust the ones who are saying yes we support these things it amazes me that the christian coalition calls a press conference to say here's our contract and there's newt gingrich there i mean this is the speaker of the house of representatives saying he's backing the christian agenda and those are we cannot allow that to be happening in terms of that connection between the elected officials and the hate-filled legislation well but they have done their very best to capture a huge part of the republican party and they are saying look we're the ones that turned out for you guys and we waited all through your silly economic contract okay and we said we were for that but now it's our turn and we're going we want to talk about prayer in the schools we want to talk about abortion etc and that's what they they have said i mean in other countries it would probably be called the christian republican party but there are other republicans and that's the thing that we need to realize is that there are other republicans that we as a community can be supporting and getting in there i'm lucky in that my assemblywoman was elected because we ended up with a seven feet seven person field in the republican primary and the far right one was the one who won the republican primary but there are different kinds of republicans who can be winning those primaries and it doesn't even if i'm a democrat that doesn't mean that i can't be getting involved in those campaigns it's ridiculous in a district that has 60 percent republicans for me to get actively involved and waste my time in behind a democratic candidate who has zero chance of winning i might as well look at the republicans and see if there's one there who maybe i can be giving a boost to i i know that might not be popular in the democratic party but if it's a long shot well then we have to be there to make a difference not all democrats are our friends anyway on the other hand i happen to be in the state of sampling with a lot of experience about how people are voting these days and i'll tell you on the gay student bill i couldn't get one republican vote in the education committee my senator at the time of ab101 republican bob beverly voted for ab101 and every so often you might find one of them we've got a very different caucus in the state assembly now and there's a lot of pressure there are only four moderate republicans out of 39 and there's an enormous amount of pressure on them to vote very consistently with the caucus because the numbers are so inequities that you have to count every vote so it is the case i mean obviously i think we should only what i've said to people is in a non-partisan way don't give a dime and don't give a vote to anyone who hasn't demonstrated that they're for you right whatever you is whether it's out you know whichever i mean you're you're a triple threat now and you need to make a demand on a triple threat point of view truly and i think that this initiative is a very good litmus test for our community about where people stand on fairness and equality you know just despite the fact that they're trying to i think cynically manipulate our wish to act fairly and to have equality that's why the language as we said at the very beginning is so um appealing and it's got a lot of supporters not only in the lesbian community but in people of color communities a lot of people of color support you know the notion of doing away with affirmative action well they feel stigmatized or they've been told they should feel sticky exactly right yeah it's like the you know the we've learned very well from our oppressors and so now we're taking that knowledge and using it on ourselves to say that well you know gee maybe because um affirmative action makes me sort of look like this strange special individual over here to the side and so i'm not really credible except for the fact that i'm black or i'm latino you know and so if i do away with that then i get recognized as a full whole human being yeah well i i wish we had another talk about this you're not going to believe this but we've gone through a whole hour of show already so i want to thank you very much thank you val thank you zeke thank you jay thank you for tuning in and watching and remember what we say to people about our community we're here we're queer get used to 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