"Racial Preferences Are Dead."

Anti-quota activist Ward Connerly on..

Michael W. Lynch from the February 1998 issue

(Page 3 of 5)

Connerly: Clinton is a white liberal from the South who still has these guilt complexes, who understands the issue like few in America do. But while he has a good flight, he makes a lousy landing because he doesn't really know where he wants to go or he doesn't have the courage to find out. He wants to be known as the man who started the debate. But he's not providing the structure for the debate, he's not outlining the choice that we have to make: the "race matters" philosophy, or the "race has no place in American life or law" philosophy, enunciated by John F. Kennedy. The president is not going to do that, and his race panel is not going to do that.

Reason: What should Clinton do to provide the structure?

Connerly: If he fully utilized the power of the bully pulpit to draw our attention to race, rather than using this race panel to try and find a new rationale for affirmative action, he could say, "Look, America, I want you to gather in meeting rooms here to talk about black/white. I want to sit you on each side of the table. I want you, the white guy, to tell the black guy what you told me a few minutes ago, that you're tired of black people whining and wanting special treatment. Now, you, the black guy, I want you to tell the white guy what you told me, which is that you're tired of the white guy thinking he's always better than you and thinking that he's superior. Now get it out there on the table and let's have it out."

That's where we have to go. Government can't change these attitudes. But it can structure the debate--it can structure the forum so that we can be honest. That's what's missing from this whole equation.

Reason: Have people's attitudes about race fundamentally changed?

Connerly: I think that Joe Sixpack's and Jane Chablis's attitudes have fundamentally changed. There are four people in our society who you can argue are the most popular figures in America. They all happen to be black: Colin Powell, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, and Michael Jordan. Whites outnumber blacks by 8 to 1 almost; name me four whites who are equal in respect to those four.

My detractors will say, "Well, you're bringing up entertainment and sports." They hate it when I bring them up. But they're a part of our culture--they're central to our culture. You can go out to a ball game and you're sitting with America--black and white--watching for the most part black people entertain you.

But those four, those four reflect the changing attitudes of white America.

Reason: How do generational politics play out with regard to affirmative action?

Connerly: Young people respond very well [to proposals like Prop. 209], as long as I can keep them away from their parents. That is especially true when it comes to blacks. If there is any one group that I think is poisoning the well of integration, it's people in the black middle class. I don't mean everybody in that black middle class. But for the most part, lawyers, those who are in the academy, those who are in the media--they perceive themselves to have benefited from affirmative action and they want to pass the baton along to their kids.

Recently I spoke to the contributions council of the Fortune 75. These are companies that in the aggregate contribute about 23 percent of all corporate dollars given to charity. I was told that most of the people there earned $250,000 a year and up. A black woman stood up and said, "My husband and I give our son the best of everything. He lives in a suburban neighborhood, goes to a private school, plays tennis, lives an integrated life. But pretty soon he's going to have to go to college and we're going to have to sit him down and tell him about the professor who's going to try to steer him into the wrong track because he's African American. We're going to have to awaken him to the cruel world of racism." I thought, "He's gotten this far on his own without it. Why then is he now going to have to be educated by you about racism as he goes to some college?"

Reason: What role do universities play in fostering the culture of preferences?

Connerly: Universities are the most race-conscience institutions in America. Race seeps out of every pore. They think it's their duty to build this welcoming environment and, for all the right reasons, they do all the wrong things. They take these suburban kids who have lived integrated lives--middle-class black kids--and they bring them to "Black Welcome Week" at Berkeley. They give their names to the black student associations, which recruit them and tell them to come and have pizza with "your brothers and sisters." They're pressured to join their brothers and sisters. If [new students] don't, they're viewed as Toms, they're viewed as wanting to be white. So they start down this path of ethnic studies, they live in this multicultural-center ghetto where their only friends are blacks and occasionally a Latino. Once in a while, they will get their own floor in the dorm, they get their own curricula, and when they graduate, they get their own separate graduation ceremonies based on their ethnic background. Then they join the Black Alumni Counsel and the Black Lawyers Association or, if they go into business, it's the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce or the Black Chamber of Commerce. We prepare them well for a life of separatism.

Reason: Let me ask you about the other side of this generational effect: What do you say to a 70-year-old woman who attended a segregated school, suffered daily the injustice of Jim Crow, and whose situation changed greatly when the federal government stepped in?

Connerly: It's not the 70-year-old that you have to worry about, it's the 50-year-old and the 40-year-old. Those are the ones that are causing the most grief right now in terms of public policy and public attitudes. Because, ironically, the 70-year-old knows that things have changed. The 70-year-old is the first person that accepts the fact that, boy, there's been a lot of progress. But if that 70-year-old happens to be what I call one of the 10 percenters--and I'll explain that to you--you tell that person about the changes in America. How it used to be that you couldn't drink from the fountain, you couldn't go into the restaurant, your kids couldn't attend the school. You tell them about life now and how they can do all those things. I think that they will accept that.