In the shadow of the recall election lurks a small seemingly beneficial amendment to the California Constitution -Proposition 54 -banning California from collecting data on ethnicity and race. If Prop. 54 passes in California it sets the precedent that Ward Connerly of the American Civil Rights Institute plans to take nationwide, moving beyond dismantling affirmative action in higher education and public employment to eliminating racial identification altogether.

But will an effort to eliminate preference to some compromise benefits for all? What if doctors couldn't track disease based on knowledge of how it affects people of different ethnicities? What if schools couldn't use racial data to understand differences in learning achievement? With such broad implications, why is the media more interested in Gary Coleman's gubernatorial bid?

• In medicine, racial data can save lives: Latinos are more vulnerable to diabetes; Asian Americans are at higher risk from Hepatitis-B; and white women are more likely to get breast cancer.
  
  
• A San Diego school district boosted reading proficiency for African American students from 25% to 40% after data revealed that those students were "struggling to read."
  
  
• A lawsuit against the California Highway Patrol established that in two districts Latinos were three times as likely and African Americans were almost twice as likely to be searched than whites.

Will evidence of racial disparities be reduced to anecdotes without the numbers to support it? In the recent University of Michigan affirmative action case, the Supreme Court cited racial diversity as a "compelling state interest," while President Bush looks "forward to the day when America will truly be a color-blind society." Mr. Connerly doesn't plan to wait for that day to arrive. He says he intends to use his next test - the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative - to "nullify the Supreme Court's University of Michigan decision."

Why should the rest of the country care about a vote in California? What does it mean to be color-blind when diversity is a "compelling state interest" and our services depend on understanding our differences? If the goal is to achieve equality, are we blinding ourselves by not looking at the evidence?