[rayiner]

If you’re going to discriminate based on skin color, it seems to me that a narrower policy that applies to the 6% of California that’s black would be an easier sell than a broader policy that ropes in the additional 40% that are Latino.

I think there’s a simpler explanation: most of the people behind Prop 16 are racist. Their only knowledge of race is the black-white dichotomy and they categorize Latinos as black for political purposes because that's the only framework they have for thinking about people with dark skin.