Racial Propositions ─ Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California

As the rest of the United States watched, voters in California banned public services for undocumented immigrants, repealed public affirmative action programs, and outlawed bilingual education, among other measures.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 antidiscrimination gains? This book looks beyond the headlines to uncover the controversial history of California's ballot measures over the past fifty years. Daniel Martinez HoSang finds that, contrary to popular perception, this phenomenon does not represent a new wave of "color-blind" policies, nor is it a triumph of racial conservatism. Instead, HoSang uncovers surprising connections between the right and the left that reveal how racial inequality has endured.

"Racial Propositions brilliantly documents the history of race in California's post-World War II ballot initiatives. If California is a harbinger for the rest of the country, then HoSang's tour de force is required reading for anyone interested in how the United States will negotiate diversity in the twenty-first century."---Tomas R. Jimenez, author of Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration, and Identity

"With narrative fluency and deftness, constructed on a bedrock of prodigious archival research, HoSang's book provides a sorely needed genealogy of the `color-blind consensus' that has come to define race and recode racism within U.S. politics, law, and public policy. This will be a book that lasts."---Nikhil Pal Singh, author of Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy

Daniel Martinez HoSang is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon.