California Regent Enlists in Local Anti-Preference Initiative

Tuesday, August 05, 1997 - Seattle Times

by Marsha King Seattle Times staff reporter

Ward Connerly sounded like an evangelist spreading the gospel on the ills of racial and gender preferences.

Wherever he went, a camera crew from the television show "60 Minutes" tagged along.

His message: Watch out, Washington.

"The winds that blow south also blow north. The public-policy virus, which affects the people of California can also enter the body politic of the state of Washington."

If Washington is not yet "infected with the virus of preferences and quotas, . . . I predict that someday so shall ye be," he said.

Connerly, a University of California regent, made his remarks at a dinner in SeaTac last night to raise money for the Washington State Civil Rights Initiative, which aims to end racial and gender preferences in state and local public education, employment and contracting. The predominantly white crowd greeted him with a standing ovation and "hip, hip, hoorays."

As a regent, Connerly helped to end such preferences on University of California campuses, then led the successful campaign for Proposition 209, which is identical in intent to this state's Initiative 200. To gather petition signatures, backers of Initiative 200 have signed up 25 grass-roots groups, including Republicans, Libertarians and United We Stand America, an offshoot of Ross Perot's presidential campaign.

Each will receive $3,000 in exchange for 10,000 signatures, the big reason for the fund-raiser. So far, about 40,000 of the required 179,248 signatures have been gathered, according to officials from the I-200 campaign. The deadline for the petition to the state Legislature is January 2.

Master of ceremonies John Carlson, who is a KVI talk-show host and chairman of the Washington Institute for Policy Studies, called Connerly a historic figure who, because of his stand against racial and gender preferences, "has suffered far more abuse as a black man in America than Jesse Jackson could dream of suffering."

Connerly cited numerous examples of discrimination that came out during California's Proposition 209 campaign:

-- A white mother of three who was removed from a community-college remedial English class because the class was set aside for Hispanics.

-- Middle-class parents, who grew up in the 1960s believing in affirmative action, who have become frustrated as their children were denied admission to the University of California because they were Asian and the university system had too many Asians.

-- Black and Latino parents who are disenchanted with an educational system that hasn't adequately prepared their children for college.

Connerly also made several challenges:

-- Gov. Gary Locke should endorse I-200.

-- Whites must look beyond skin color and stop running from black people when they move into middle-class neighborhoods.

-- Black people must "learn that there is no hyphen in the word American."

And, all of us "must now turn our attention to the very difficult task not just to share space, but to share values and interests," he said. "To walk in each other's shoes. Become genuine friends."

Return to the I-200 page.
Return to the Affirmative Action and Diversity Page

Carl Gutierrez-Jones
Department of English
University of California, Santa Barbara
e-mail: carlgj@humanitas.ucsb.edu