Proposition 187 : Is Black-Latino Friction a Voting-Booth Issue? : No: The initiative’s backers would put all minorities in the same boat. African Americans won’t escape harm.

Proposition 187 is an attack on all Californians.

It would attack our civil rights, it would attack our health, it would attack our pocketbooks. Unfortunately, it would not attack illegal immigration.

It is very disturbing to hear people say that this initiative should be used as a way to get even with some other group, particularly members of the Latino community.

Proposition 187 contains a Pandora’s box of ills that will not be limited to any single group or community that may be targets of bigotry and revenge. It is morally bankrupt, socially corrupt and fiscally unsound.

African Americans, of all Californians, should be wary of Proposition 187 and not jump on the bandwagon of an overly simplistic proposal based on bigotry and misrepresented as a solution to the serious illegal immigration crisis.

The initiative would force the development of a police-state mentality. The authors set out to enforce its provisions by requiring American citizens to turn anyone whom they found to be “suspect” in to the authorities.

It does not define “suspect” or the criteria that should be used in determining who fits that description, but one does not need a crystal ball to see how distinctions would be made. “Suspects” are sure to be determined by the color of their skin, the way they talk or the sound of their last name. The power to determine who is suspect is put in the hands of any person at a school or health facility.

Education Secretary Richard Riley has stated that $450 million in federal funds will be withdrawn from the Los Angeles public school system if Proposition 187 is approved by voters. This will hurt all students attending public schools including African Americans, Asians, Latinos and whites, particularly the poor, who are most vulnerable. The school district would lose Chapter I funding, which enhances education for poverty-stricken black and Latino students attending South Central Los Angeles schools. The state’s total loss of federal education and health funds would come to $15 billion.

Proposition 187 would deny immunization and other basic health care services to illegal immigrants. This would pose a serious health danger to all of us. Dangerous diseases have already reached epidemic proportions. This would worsen.

There are credible news reports that link white supremacists and Proposition 187. The author of the initiative wrote it while he was a paid lobbyist for an anti-immigration group bankrolled by the Pioneer Fund. The Pioneer Fund has spent millions of dollars over the decades supporting “research” designed to prove the genetic superiority of the white race over blacks and Latinos.

The greatest hoax being perpetrated on California voters, who are justifiably upset over the serious problem of illegal immigration, is that Proposition 187 would solve the problem.

Proposition 187 would do nothing to solve our illegal immigration problem. It would do nothing to enforce laws already on the books or add one border guard between Mexico and California. And it would not send anyone out of California. My African American brothers and sisters should recognize that the current “close the border hysteria” will be used against Haitians, black Africans and others of our color.

Some argue that we need to send a message, but Proposition 187 is not a telegram. It is a real law with real repercussions. Do not take my word for it. It is all in your voters pamphlet.

If you read your pamphlet, you will also find that Proposition 187 would throw 300,000 school-children out of our classrooms and onto our streets.

Again, it does not send them anywhere. It just throws them out of schools. Many will then learn the lessons of the streets--gangbanging, violence and crime.

Proposition 187 is wrong no matter how you look at it. But add in the City of Los Angeles, struggling to bring together the most diverse population in the world, and you have a disaster in the making.