...Meanwhile, Connerly is spearheading another California ballot question. Proposition 54, the Racial Privacy Initiation, will be on the same Oct. 7 ballot as the proposed recall of Governor Gray Davis. It would prohibit state and local government agencies (with certain broad exemptions) from collecting racial or ethnic data on its residents.

If Proposition 54 passes, California and its official institutions would have no more authority to ask a citizen her race than they do to ask her religion or sexual orientation. No longer would Californians be forced to check those odious little boxes and sort themselves into rigid racial and ethnic categories. In the nation's most racially and ethnically diverse state, official racial classifications and stereotypes would at last become a thing of the past...