The defection of Connerly allies like Wood and McWhorter doesn't bode well for racial privacy as a hot new intellectual fad. But it's not surprising that the idea wouldn't catch fire in academia: Researchers and scholars are congenitally in favor of having more, not less, information. Many are likely to join Patrick Callan of the Center for Public Policy and Higher Education in calling Connerly's latest gambit a "see-no-evil, hear-no-evil approach to the world."

Says Callan, "There are legitimate questions about what the appropriate solutions are, but not knowing some things doesn't make us better off as a society in terms of being able to solve them."

Yet a few scholars say they are willing to sacrifice the utility of racial statistics for the greater good of moving closer to a race-blind America. Like McWhorter, Shelby Steele of Stanford's Hoover Institution has used racial data to assail affirmative action. But, having decided that the debate itself is destructive, he is says he supports the initiative, because he sees no evidence that racial data helps craft smart social policy. Indeed, he argues that interjecting race into social policy is harmful.

"All of this number crunching has had a negative impact," said Steele. "If you have a racial breakdown on you-name-the-problem -- illegitimacy rates, literacy rates -- what does that do? It doesn't solve illegitimacy or illiteracy. It just enables the left and the right in America to fight. When we cloak these problems in race, we're going to do one thing and one thing only -- we're going to argue over whether those problems are the result of racism and whether minorities are victims and whether they're not, and the problems themselves get completely lost."

Arguments like Steele's may carry the day outside of academia. It won't be academics or demographers, after all, but the voting public who will decide the fate of this initiative, and voters are just starting to find out about it. Only 25 percent of those polled recently were familiar with the measure.

DiCamillo of the Field Institute thinks the proposition is beatable -- as, he says, was Prop. 209. "It does not have a huge lead," said DiCamillo. "It seems to be vulnerable to a well-funded No-side campaign." And there likely will be one: Nevarez is part of a growing network of environmentalists, civil rights lawyers, housing advocates and educators who aren't waiting for the initiative to qualify to begin organizing against it.

And it does not bode well for Connerly that several prominent California academics who sided with him on affirmative action, including Wood's Prop. 209 coauthor Glynn Custred, have yet to support his new initiative. It's possible that the opposition of Wood and others could lend a critical mass to efforts to defeat Connerly's latest crusade.

Another major difference from the Prop. 209 battle is the demographics of California's electorate. Since 1996, whites have dropped from 76 percent to 70 percent of likely voters, with Latinos increasing from 11 percent to 16 percent, Asian Americans growing from 6 percent to 8 percent, and African-Americans holding steady at 6 percent.

And yet focusing on the declining number of white voters in California assumes that only whites will be sympathetic to Connerly's colorblindness crusade. As Rodriguez notes, untold numbers of Latino, Asian and black voters may well agree with Connerly -- not to mention the fastest growing racial group, mixed-race Californians. Though a majority voted against it, a significant number of Asian, Latino and even black voters supported Prop. 209. The number of nonwhites supporting Connerly's initiative will likely be bigger than the civil-rights establishment expects but smaller than Connerly hopes. Still, whenever it appears on the California ballot, Connerly's latest cause is sure to advance the debate about race in this state, even if voters decide its time has not yet come.

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