Amendment to end affirmative action draws protest

“It's hard to win a race when you start out behind. It's hard to have equal pay as a woman,” Marilyn Luper Hildreth said. “If it was fair and it was equal we wouldn't even have to worry about it. We would not have to be here tonight, but we are not naive enough to think that things have really changed.”

Oklahoma voters will decide in November whether to prohibit the use of affirmative action in state government hiring practices, contracting and education.

The authors of legislation to put State Question 759 on the ballot say affirmative action is no longer needed and that state jobs and contracts, and seats at colleges and universities should go to the most qualified applicants regardless of race.

“I think that as a state we should not be discriminating or giving preferential treatment to anyone simply on the color of their skin or their sex,” said Sen. Rob Johnson, R-Yukon, the primary author of the proposed amendment. “As a state we need to be leading by the example that we don't recognize differences in people except for by their qualifications.”

Oklahoma law currently does not allow for quotas when hiring or awarding contracts. And the state's public universities don't use race as a factor during the admissions process.

However, the Office of Equal Opportunity Workforce Diversity, a part of the Office of Personnel Management, tracks diversity in state government and requires each state agency to submit affirmative action plans.

An analysis of 33,405 employees in 115 reporting state agencies found that overall Oklahoma hires minorities at a slightly lower rate than the public sector, but hires women at a higher rate.

According to the report, 77.4 percent of Oklahoma state employees are white and 56.9 percent are female.