African American to be I-200 Spokeswoman
African American to be I-200 Spokeswoman by Tom Brune
Seattle Times staff reporter
A touch of diversity is being added to the white-male leadership of the campaign for Initiative 200, which would roll back affirmative action in state and local government.
Starting this month, Bellevue Republican Mary Radcliffe, an African American, will become a spokeswoman for the campaign. Her job is to persuade voters to cast ballots on Nov. 3 for I-200.
If approved, the initiative would ban preferences based on race, ethnicity and gender in state and local public employment, contracting and education, ending affirmative action as it is now practiced.
Radcliffe is one of three co-chairs officially being named this month, said conservative commentator John Carlson, who has been sharing campaign duties with Republican state Rep. Scott Smith of Graham, Pierce County.
Carlson said the campaign will also add former state Senate Majority Leader Jeannette Hayner of Walla Walla and conservative activist Pat Herbold of Bellevue, the wife of Microsoft chief operating officer Bob Herbold. Both are white women.
"Wherever we have gone there has just been John Carlson or Scott Smith," said Kelly Evans, No!200 campaign manager. In contrast, she said, the No!200 campaign involves a statewide coalition of diverse people from all sectors of society.
No!200's staff members, for example, include three white women, an Asian woman, a black woman, a Latino man and a white man. It is overseen by a 10-member executive committee that is half male, half female and includes three African Americans, three Asians and four whites.
Radcliffe, 56, said she is not Washington state's Ward Connerly.
Connerly, a black businessman, was lead spokesman and director of California's successful Proposition 209, the model for I-200. His organization, the American Civil Rights Institute, has contributed much of I-200's campaign funds.
Joe Gelman, a former campaign manager for Proposition 209, has told reporters that Connerly's recruitment as spokesman was a cynical ploy to "use affirmative action to defeat affirmative action."
Carlson said Radcliffe had already taken her stand before joining the I-200 campaign.
In an interview, Radcliffe said Carlson is directing her involvement. Her first debate will be next month.
Radcliffe, an outspoken conservative and writer of letters to the editor, stresses self-reliance and color-blindness. She rejects the attitude that standards should be lowered to help African Americans.
"My grandmother would roll over in her grave if she thought I was taking something that I did not earn," she said.
But she acknowledged that racism and discrimination continue to be problems.
"I don't think of myself as a particular color," she said, "but others remind me that I am, and the reminders always come in a negative manner."
She said she believes educating people and practicing the Golden Rule would help in dealing with discrimination, but is against the use of preferential treatment. "You cannot do wrong to correct the wrong," she said.
Radcliffe was born in Eunice in southwestern Louisiana, and moved to Seattle when she was 17. She attended Seattle University, but had to drop out because of finances.
Though now retired, Radcliffe has worked at a variety of jobs, from live-in maid to sales representative. As a single mother, Radcliffe raised and put a daughter through college.
She has since remarried. Her husband, Jim Radcliffe, who is white, is a retired Boeing executive.
Radcliffe said she does not think I-200 ends most affirmative-action programs, and cannot understand why so many fear it.
She said she talked with her bishop at church about her position on I-200, and he told her she was looking at the ideal world and he was looking at the real world.
"I'm a black woman, and I know what the real world is all about," she said. "I'm not looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. I'm not allowed to."
Carlson said, "I think a lot of people could learn a lot from Mary, including our supporters."
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and Diversity Page
Carl
Gutiérrez-Jones
Department of English
University of California, Santa Barbara
e-mail: carlgj@humanitas.ucsb.edu