But Ward Connerly is more likely to be remembered for the quality of his ideas than for the quality of his work. As a member of the University of California Board of Regents, he is leading a campaign to abolish racial preferences in the state university system. A vote will be taken in June. His effort is the first of many, the beginning of a historic turn in America – the probable end of the 25-year attempt to make benign, remedial distinctions according to race and gender. “Affirmative action is dead,” Connerly says. “We are negotiating the burial rites.”
It’s been a curious quarter-century. Affirmative action – the accepted, if imprecise, shorthand for ethnic and gender preference programs – has insinuated itself into every aspect of American public life, and much of the private sector as well. This has been a profound and extremely controversial development, not least because the policy has evolved in virtual silence, with a minimum of democracy – almost entirely by executive order and court fiat, almost never legislatively; almost never the result of a public debate. That, however, is about to change. In California there will be a 1996 ballot question that would forbid the use of ethnicity or gender “as a criterion for either discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to, any individual or group.” This question, also known as the California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), is likely to dominate the 1996 election year – including the presidential campaign – much as the anti-illegal-immigrant question (Prop. 187) dominated 1994. Practically no one in California expects it to fail. And even before the CCRI campaign heats up, there will be Supreme Court cases and legislative initiatives in Washington and in many states, almost all of which are likely to narrow the use of racial preferences.
In fact, we may be hurtling toward the most sensitive moment in American race relations since the 1960s – more sensitive, in some ways, because a reduction of perceived “rights” seems inevitable. The reaction of the black community is likely to be cold fury, incendiary rhetoric-and a deep sense of despair. “You are putting a formula together to maintain white America in total control so that racial-minority America can never be part of the system,” Willie Brown, the state Assembly speaker, has said. The response from white America is likely to be a disingenuous and slightly smarmy call for a “colorblind society.” This will be especially galling when it comes, as it so often does, from some of the same people who tried to block “colorblind” civil-rights legislation 30 years ago – and who routinely oppose most efforts to help the poor now.
But if the journey seems destined to be ugly, it might also prove cathartic. “We might as well look each other in the eye and have it out,” says Shelby Steele, the black essayist who has written the most psychologically astute analyses of this dilemma. “We might as well talk about white guilt and black dependency, and how disastrous both have been. We might as well end the delusion that white people have it in their power to save us.”
Affirmative action hasn’t been a total failure. The initial impulse certainly was noble. It crystallized a public desire to break down barriers, to include those who’d been excluded in the past. Over time, it has become socially impossible to run any large institution – public or private-in a racially exclusionary manner. But there have been negative consequences as well, and an inescapable conclusion: discrimination can’t be cured by counter discrimination. It is not only divisive but fundamentally unfair, and, in some ways, the results are more costly for blacks than for whites.
No doubt, the rush to overturn affirmative action is a result of the recent political tide. But there are better reasons than white resentment – and political expediency – for ending this policy now. There is the subtle, stigmatizing impact on minorities – the anguish Ward Connerly feels. There is the institutionalization of different, lower, standards for blacks and Latinos, allowing an illusion of progress, an illusion that evaporates quickly, and cruelly, when the beneficiaries are forced to compete in the real world. There is the disastrous impact on civil society when the fundamental American notion of individual rights is supplanted by “group entitlement,” as in the racial gerrymandering that has re-segregated electoral districts in the South. There is, finally, reality: most of these programs haven’t worked very well – at least in public-sector areas like the granting of contracts, and in semipublic areas like college admissions. (A case can be made that private, voluntary efforts by corporations have succeeded and should survive – but these might be legally challenged by conservatives as well.)
“Affirmative action is a gravy train,” says a Los Angeles public official. “It’s become a way for black politicians to take care of their friends. Opportunity doesn’t expand. The same, small group of businessmen benefit every time.” Of course, it could be argued that this generation of black mayors should have the same right to enrich their cronies as earlier, paler pols did. But the legitimization of graft is hardly a worthy legacy of the civil-rights movement. It makes for embarrassing lawsuits-the latest is the Adarand case, now before the U.S. Supreme Court, in which a white, family-owned business in Colorado low-bid a highway contract and lost out to a Latino-owned company, which took advantage of an affirmative-action bonus.
Racial remedies haven’t worked very well in academia, either. The Bakke case in 1978 established race as one factor colleges may consider in admissions, but it clearly has become more important than that. As Jeffrey Rosen recently noted in The New Republic, “only one out of the 280 black applicants to [the University of Texas Law School] in 1992 had a score high enough” to be admitted without a racial preference. Those who do get in are often tossed into an environment where they can not succeed. The conservative black intellectual Thomas Sowell has called the phenomenon “mis-matching” – students who might do very well at their local state college are accepted into elite institutions where the competition for grades is intense. As of 1998, two out of every three blacks who entered college didn’t graduate.
The California Civil Rights Initiative has its roots in the bizarre racial politics of the state’s public university system, where the blatant recruiting of minority faculty members, regardless of merit, led two relatively obscure academics to take action. “But the thing that really got us,” says Glynn Custred, an anthropology professor who is one the CCRI sponsors, “was when the state legislature passed a bill that would have mandated quotas – the same proportion as the population of California – for admissions and graduation. Thank God, [Gov. Pete] Wilson refused to sign it.”
Custred and his cosponsor Thomas Woods are suddenly very popular. Republicans, not surprisingly, have embraced their initiative. More titillating is the flurry of private meetings CCRI sponsors have had with Democrats. There is a possibility the party will shatter over this, splitting the liberal base (minorities, feminists and public employees) and more moderate Democrats, Bill Clinton is suspended in between, his re-election held hostage to this issue, a scenario that is already the subject of nonstop hand-wringing within the White House. “You may be shocked by some of the people who wind up supporting this,” says a Democratic member of Congress. “For some, it’s political expediency. [But] a lot of us believe these programs just don’t work.”
The crucial figure may be Willie Brown, the powerful state Assembly leader who is hoping to move over to the state Senate in 1996. Brown is opposed to CCRI, “but Willie has to think about practical politics,” says one California Democrat. “If Democrats get wiped out by this he won’t control the Senate.” Last week Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, the highest-ranking elected Democrat in California, signaled that his position was . . . in transition. “There aren’t any sacred cows. We should re-examine every program,” he told me. “We know that affirmative action has created problems, abuses we didn’t contemplate. But if you eliminate or severely curb . . . then what?”
The “then what” is crucial. The original sin – racism, born of slavery – remains an American outrage. If affirmative action is rejected, there is a need to send an emphatic message of continued inclusion to the black community. But how? One way might be to insist that discrimination be punished severely. There could be serious, high-profile “sting” operations against businesses suspected of bigoted practices. There could also be a symbolic leveling of the playing field from the top, the elimination of “legacies” – affirmative action for the academically disadvantaged children of alumni (about 12 percent of all admissions at elite colleges). “I think we should do the opposite,” says Ward Connerly, “and give a break to students whose parents didn’t go to college.” Connerly also favors a form of affirmative action by economic status. “Not lower standards,” he says, “but outreach, an effort to identify promising youngsters in poor neighborhoods and prepare them to compete in college.” There is such a program – Upward Bound, which uses student volunteers from 609 different colleges as tutors. The bad news is that it hasn’t been very effective: while 88 percent of the Upward Bound students are accepted into college, only 25 percent graduate. The most convincing replacement for affirmative action might be to guarantee a first-rate education for every poor child in America – but that wouldn’t come cheap, and it would be money wasted without steady, responsible parental involvement.
In the end, leadership must also come from the president. Affirmative action is likely to end on Bill Clinton’s watch. He has a responsibility to make it clear – now, before the court cases, before the California referendum heats up – why this policy has failed and what the country must do next to bind the wounds and make sure all doors remain open. He cannot equivocate; his standard mushy two-step will not suffice. There is more at stake here than a presidency. The most basic American idea – that people from all races and religions can coexist as equals – may be on the line.
Should there be special consideration for each of the following groups to increase their opportunities for getting into college and getting jobs or promotions?
(percent saying yes) GROUP BLACKS WHITES Blacks 62% 25% Women 62% 26% Hispanics 57% 22% Asians 48% 18% Native Americans 65% 34%
THE NEWSWEEK POLL, FEB. 1-3, 1995
