Unpacking Racial Discourse in California Proposition Politics: A Review of Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California by Daniel Martinez HoSang

Abstract

THE CALIFORNIA Journal of Politics & Policy Book Review Unpacking Racial Discourse in California Proposition Politics: A Review of Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California by Daniel Martinez HoSang Kelly Kelleher Richter Stanford University In recent public discussions about California’s deep fiscal and institutional problems, issues of race and ethnic- ity have commanded less emphasis than many academic and political commentators believe they merit. Daniel Martinez HoSang’s new book, Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California, provides a corrective. HoSang argues that “The state simply can- not solve the myriad crises it chronically faces—related to www.bepress.com/cjpp Volume 3, Issue 1, 2011 prisons, budgeting, resource management, health, educa- tion, transportation, and the like—without coming to terms with the racial propositions that underlie all of these is- sues.” 1 Racial Propositions analyzes the rhetorical strategies of leading political groups and actors in a set of California ballot initiative debates between 1946 and 2003. Applying a critical lens to “political language, symbols, and modes of address,” HoSang highlights congruity in how Califor- nians on all sides of contentious policy debates framed issues of race and ethnicity across this long period. 2 He argues that a foundational political discourse of “racial lib- eralism” stressing individual rights, opportunity, tolerance, and fairness proved malleable to disparate groups and actors, helping give rise to the elisions of contemporary Review of: Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California by Daniel Martinez Hosang. 2010. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press.