AFRICAN-AMERICANS CROSS COLOR LINE : SUPPORT OF PROP. 209 DEMONSTRATES MANY BLACKS TIRING OF `HANDOUTS'.

Byline: Earl Ofari Hutchinson

MANY African-Americans called the handful of blacks who publicly supported the ``California Civil Rights Initiative,'' which bars affirmative action in state programs, racial Judases. They believe that the initiative passed because angry white males voted for it, Pete Wilson and Bob Dole pushed it and the California Republican Party bankrolled it. But almost unnoticed is that slightly more than one out of four blacks voted for the initiative.

Their more than 60,000 votes would have pushed the ``no'' vote total past 4 million. This would not have been enough to defeat the initiative, but it would have narrowed the margin of defeat, given the court challenges even more political urgency and legitimacy and perhaps increased the chance of getting an injunction against enforcement of the initiative and ultimately overturning it.

Many insist that the blacks who supported the initiative were confused by its deceptive language or were misled by Republican trickery. This is much too simple. Many blacks are convinced that they have achieved their success in business and the professions through hard work, education and ability. They agree that affirmative action, like welfare, discourages incentive and unfairly stigmatizes blacks as social paupers, eternally seeking government handouts. They feel insulted that many whites claim they got ahead because of their color and not competence.

Many younger blacks did not experience Jim Crow laws, have almost no knowledge of the civil rights battles that erased them and only the fuzziest notion of how affirmative action benefits them. This deepens their feelings that affirmative action laws have little relevance to them or aids white females, Latinos and Asians more than blacks.

The anti-affirmative action sentiment among blacks is also fueled by the new wave of black radio commentators, writers, academics and politicians who oppose affirmative action, welfare, abortion and government spending programs. They advocate school prayer, more police and prisons, self-help and personal responsibility.

The early warning signs that more blacks are part of the growing conservative political sea of change came during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination debate in 1991. A USA Today poll found that nearly half of the blacks surveyed supported self-help and not government quotas.

During the recent presidential election, Haley Barbour, Republican National Committee chairman, claimed that 25-45 percent of blacks called themselves ``conservative.'' His low-side estimate pretty much matches the anti-affirmative action vote by blacks in California.

If more blacks are becoming more conservative and more resistant to affirmative action, it's because more blacks are prosperous. Since the 1970s, there has been a 52 percent increase in the number of black managers, professionals, technicians and government officials. Nearly one-third of blacks have incomes that exceed $35,000 annually, and 10 percent have incomes that exceed $50,000 annually. A sizeable percentage of blacks now claim they are pro-life, pro-school prayer and anti-gun control, again proving the point that middle-class blacks are more likely to be solid patriots than protesters.

There's yet another reason that more blacks style themselves as conservatives. African-Americans are among America's oldest native sons and daughters. They are totally shaped by American ideals and have always embraced conservative values and goals. Black churches, social organizations, political and economic associations and black leaders advocate mostly conservative programs of self-help, business development, law and order, strong religious and family values, and legal protest.

During America's wars, African-Americans enthusiastically answered the call to arms. Black divisions distinguished themselves in the Civil War and the Spanish American War. Blacks dutifully marched off to the battlefields of Korea and Vietnam. They fought and died in disproportionate numbers. Blacks composed more than one-third of the fighting force in the Gulf War.

Even black radical protest has always come wrapped in American colors. Malcolm X called for black empowerment through the ballot and self-help programs, not the gun. The Black Panthers shouted ``pick up the gun,'' but their program of voter education, free breakfasts, clothing giveaways and business development was hardly revolutionary. Strip the anti-white and anti-Jewish rhetoric from Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam's program of farm and business development, family values and law and order is straight mom-pop, apple pie Americanism.

The NAACP and Urban League always waged their fights for jobs, affirmative action, education, civil rights legislation and political representation within the tradition of American reform. Their recent national conventions emphasized self-help programs, personal responsibility and family values.

Many blacks will continue to call those blacks who think that affirmative action and indeed all government programs are lose-lose propositions, whose time has long since past, racial traitors. But if the black vote against affirmative action in California is any indication, almost surely their ranks will grow.