Archive for Ward Connerly
I’m working on a column about the controversy brewing at UC San Diego since last month. A group of white UCSD students held an off-campus “ghetto” party that offended some blacks, and a student-run TV station used a racial slur. Consequently, the students have come up with a list of race-based “demands” for the school. Sounds 60s, doesn’t it?
The party was organized by a black comedian calling himself Jiggaboo Jones. He’s superfluous to the mainstream media narrative on the issue, so ignore him.
Among the demands are race-based admissions, hiring, and funding. One problem: California voters barred their government from discriminating against and preferring individuals or groups based on factors like race.
The American Civil Rights Institute’s Ward Connerly, the man behind the California measure, will review the agreement between the students and the school to determine whether they violate state law. An excerpt:
“Blacks make up just 2 percent of the student body at the La Jolla campus … ‘There just aren’t enough black kids who are academically prepared to go to UC San Diego,’ Connerly said.
“He said members of the Black Student Union would do the most good by going to churches and other organizations in their communities, emphasizing education to younger children to make them academically competitive when the time comes to apply to college.”
There’s no glamour in that, Mr. Connerly, and it’s too much work. Great idea, though. Protesting and demanding race-based entitlements make the heart race.
More to come.
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If you’ve been living in a Wi-Fi-bereft cave for the last few days, you probably missed the Harry Reid uproar. The senator said something rather innocuous about our biracial president during the campaign. He described Barack Obama as a “light-skinned” black man with “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”
As expected, bedlam broke out. Now I, as a black woman, was not offended by Reid’s remarks. People on the right, however, are calling for Reid’s resignation as Senate Majority Leader. They cite the left’s hypocritical reaction to Trent Lott’s remarks about Senator Strom, which I’ve blogged about several times. An excerpt of a book review:
On December 5, 2002, Republican senator Trent Lott toasted 100-year-old Republican senator Strom Thurmond, a former segregationist, at a private birthday party, saying that if the rest of the country had voted for Thurmond for president as he had (Thurmond ran in 1948 as a Dixiecrat), “we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years.”
About a year and a half later, on the Senate floor (and on taxpayers’ time), Democrat Chris Dodd said that Democrat Robert Byrd (who said on cable TV a few years earlier that he’d seen a lot of “white niggers” in his time), a former segregationist and KKK recruiter, would have been “a great senator” during America’s founding, crafting of the Constitution, and the Civil War.
The backlash against Lott was fierce. He apologized and groveled on Black Entertainment Television (BET) but was eventually drummed out of his leadership post. The backlash against Dodd? Non-existent. He neither prostrated himself before the PC gods nor played the fool on BET.
Republicans are upset because of the double standard. If a Republican had said what Reid said, he’d be toast. But Reid’s a Democrat, with the backing of the Congressional Black Caucus. He can’t be touched.
The American Civil Rights Institute’s Ward Connerly wrote about the topic in the Wall Street Journal. I agree with Connerly about the substance of Reid’s comment, and not just because I blog for ACRI:
“For my part, I am having a difficult time determining what it was that Mr. Reid said that was so offensive…Was it because he suggested that lighter-skinned blacks fare better in American life than their darker brothers and sisters? If so, ask blacks whether they find this to be true. Even the lighter-skinned ones, if they are honest with themselves, will agree that there is a different level of acceptance.
“Was it because he used the politically incorrect term ‘negro’? If so, it should be noted that there are many blacks of my generation who continue to embrace this term. In fact, ‘negro’ is an option along with ‘black’ and ‘African-American’ on the 2010 Census.
…
“Or, finally, could it be viewed as offensive that Mr. Reid suggested that blacks often have a distinctive way of speaking? If that is, indeed, the offense, then I will offend a lot of individuals when I assert that I can tell in probably 90% of the cases whether an individual is black merely by talking to him on the telephone.
“In short, this incident does not rise to the level that it prompts me to join the parade of those who urge Mr. Reid to resign because of it. There are far more substantive matters over which the Senate majority leader’s performance should be judged—and I find his performance seriously flawed on any number of them.”
Republicans usually are the ones groveling and apologizing for “offending” someone at the mere mention of race, while the left typically gets a pass. That’s politics and plain old human nature. With the Congressional Black Caucus behind him, Harry Reid won’t lose his leadership post. And I don’t think what he said rises to that level, just as I didn’t think Lott’s comments warranted his stepping down.
Can we move on to substantive issues?
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Matt Waters writes about the American Civil Rights Institute’s Ward Connerly on Townhall.
“Thirteen years ago one man challenged the political establishment—of both parties—and won,” Waters writes. “His issue? Ending racial preferences. The man? Ward Connerly. Connerly, a Sacramento-based businessman, made the case why all Americans, black and white, should oppose racial preferences. At their core, racial preferences were meant to assist the disadvantaged, those who had a lesser education or who were born into impoverished conditions. What was created was a system that cheated thousands of hard working Americans of all races and classes, and coddled some Americans based solely on their race or gender.”
I reviewed Connerly’s first book, Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences, a few years before I met him. Check it out.
Waters notes the anger of groups opposed to equal treatment, such as ACORN, which tried to stop petitioners collecting signatures for measures that banned government preferences and discrimination in hiring, contracting, and admitting.
“Blocking and harassing petition circulators isn’t the only challenge facing the American Civil Rights Coalition as it attempts to get its initiative on the ballot in states across the nation. According to Connerly, ‘The other challenge comes in the form of lawsuits like the one the ACLU recently filed against our effort in Missouri. A judge there barred our initiative from appearing on the ballot based on a technicality. But this is the second time we have been blocked from gathering signatures by fraudulent ballot language written by the ACORN-backed Secretary of State, Robin Carnahan.’”
Read the full text of the article here.
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As you probably read, the University of California system (UC) raised fees by 32 percent for fall 2010 admissions. The American Civil Rights Institute’s Ward Connerly, a former UC regent, says he voted against proposals to raise fees for students during his tenure.
“But with each vote I realized that UC was slowly moving toward the day when basic decisions would have to be made about how the university is financed, who can attend it and what the public should expect from the institution. Well, that day has come; and the public can either dodge the issues or face them, and try to craft a new relationship with UC.” (Source)
Connerly says UC is a business operating as though it were a public service enterprise. While popular campuses like Berkeley, LA, and San Diego could get away with raising fees “significantly,” other campuses can’t. UC seeks to hold on to both identities.
“[M]aintaining its public service identity seems to oblige UC to create and maintain its own internal subsidy for students who cannot afford the fees that others pay,” Connerly writes. “For example, a third of every dollar paid by student fees is used to provide financial assistance to students whose family incomes are considered low to moderate. As my nemesis on the Board of Regents, William Bagley, often remarked, this is a tax on families of UC students. As such, I would suggest it ought to be paid by the state taxpayers rather than solely by the families of UC students. Getting rid of this “Robin Hood” fee structure would enable UC to avoid raising its fees by 32 percent just so it can give 33 percent of that 32 percent back to lower-income students. Instead of a 32 percent hike, the recent increase would have been 21 percent.”
Connerly believes taking a market-based approach, similar to that of selective private schools, would be the better option for UC, rather than an institution that accepts government funds.
“When UC becomes a market-based entity, it might be forced to make cuts in certain courses that can no longer be justified. A market-based entity would also do a better job of reducing the time-to-degree.”
But UC likely won’t do it, because it makes too much sense.
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The American Civil Rights Institute’s Ward Connerly was quoted in a New York Times article about “holistic” or comprehensive admissions.
According to the story, holistic or comprehensive admissions supposedly allows officials “the luxury of thoughtfully knitting together a multitalented student body as well as a diverse one” by looking beyond grades and scores.
In less flowery language, holistic or comprehensive admissions criteria typically are “noncognitive” factors like personal essays, extracurricular activities, so-called leadership skills, disadvantaged backgrounds, etc. The process isn’t new or innovative; it provides a way for schools to admit more lower qualified minorities to satisfy an arbitrary diversity standard.
“One catalyst for holistic review is the desire for a diverse student body without quotas,” says NYT.
Are noncognitive assessments a proxy for race? It depends.
If all applicants are assessed under holistic or comprehensive review equally, the process would be fair, for lack of a better word. As I’ve asked many times, why would this kind of review result in more black students? Do admissions officers use a heavier hand when applying it to black applicants than they do with Asians or whites?
An excerpt:
“The anti-affirmative-action activist Ward Connerly says that ‘many publics are converting to comprehensive review in anticipation of the demise of race preferences.’ He favors the approach but objects to what he calls attempts ‘to circumvent the Constitutional prohibition against the use of race’ by admitting students who fall short on academic achievement.
“As a regent of the University of California, Mr. Connerly also acted, he says, to ‘remove legacy and fat-cat preferences’ as factors in admission. ‘If you’re going to have a system that rewards admission on the basis of individual achievements,’ he explains, ‘I concluded that it would be hypocritical to eliminate race but to keep legacies or be admitted on the strength of some donor who wanted a friend to be admitted or a relative.’
“Mr. Connerly was referring to the admission scandal that has roiled the University of Illinois’s Urbana-Champaign campus in recent months. The Chicago Tribune uncovered a ‘clout list’ of well-connected and sometimes unqualified applicants who were given special consideration; a state commission called the process ‘perhaps unparalleled among universities in its level of formality and structure.’ In September, the university president resigned, and most trustees have been replaced.”
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California legislators ought to carry a copy of the state constitution in their pockets and refer to it when writing laws. It’s a useful guide, laying out what the people have a right to do and what the government shall not do. For example, Article I, Section 31 reads in part:
“The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”
Thirteen years ago, 54 percent of voters passed Proposition 209, which added this language to the state’s constitution. But legislators either are unaware or they just don’t care. The latest attempt to circumvent the law is requiring race- and sex-based quotas in contracting. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who swore to uphold the constitution, signed into law a bill that directs state departments to award government contracts to the lowest responsible bidder subcontracting 15 percent of the work to minority-owned businesses and five percent to female-owned businesses. The contractor who fails to do so will be rejected, even if he’s the lowest bidder.
Read the rest at Townhall.
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The American Civil Rights Institute’s Ward Connerly is headed to the University of Arizona to talk about the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative (AzCRI) on October 28, from 4-5:30 p.m. See this page for more details.
The 2008 effort to add AzCRI to the state ballot failed after the campaign ran out of time to validate some 6,000 signatures. The proposed amendment would have barred the state government from discriminating against or granting preferences to any person on group based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in government hiring, contracting, and admissions.
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Americans of Asian descent account for about 12 percent of California’s population, yet they account for 40 percent of all undergraduates at the University of California at Los Angeles, 43 percent at Berkeley, 50 percent at San Diego, and 54 percent at Irvine.
The American Civil Rights Institute’s (ACRI) Ward Connerly has written about UC’s efforts to “tinker” with admissions. A UC administrator told him “unless the university took steps to ‘guide’ admissions decisions, UC would be dominated by Asians. When I asked, ‘What would be wrong with that?’ I got an answer that speaks volumes about the underlying philosophy at many universities with regard to Asian enrollment.
“The UC administrator told me that Asians are ‘too dull – they study, study, study.’ He then said, ‘If you ever say I said this, I will have to deny it.’ I won’t betray the individual’s anonymity because to do so would put him in a world of trouble. Yet, it is time to confront the not-so-subtle hand of discrimination against Asians that masquerades as ‘building diversity’ at many campuses.”
UCLA professor Mitchell Chang noted the “dull” stereotype. Students of Asian descent may be “disproportionately less likely to participate in certain kinds of extracurricular activities,” and the admissions committee may be biased against “academic nerd” types. (Source)
It should come as no surprise that elite schools discriminate against students of Asian descent. Princeton University released a study that showed these students were much more likely to be rejected than other students. A black student with 1150s and a white student with 1460s had the same chances of getting in as an Asian student with 1600s, top scores. Download the 11-page Power Point study (PDF).
Is this an indication of elite schools keeping numbers down because Asians are “too dull – they study, study, study,” or because these students would overrun schools but for lower standards for preferred minorities, and, as it turns out, whites? Even more damning is this (emphasis added):
“He also found some indications that while rich students make up an increasingly large share of the entering freshman classes, the top private schools appeared to be giving admissions edges to low-income minorities, but not necessarily low-income white students.”
So much for class-based affirmative action, which would help lower income students of any race. The numbers bear out the truth: schools significantly are lowering standards for blacks, moderately for whites, and not at all for Asians. But this practice may change. Three years ago, an Asian student with perfect SAT scores filed a complaint alleging that Princeton discriminated against him by rejecting his application. The article reports that the Department of Education is investigating Princeton.
Spokesman Cass Cliatt said, “Princeton considers factors such as interest in and demonstrated commitment to a particular field of study or extracurricular activity, exceptional skills and talents, experiences and background, status as an alumni child or Princeton faculty or staff child, athletic achievement, musical or artistic talent, geographic or socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity, any unique circumstances, and a range of other factors.”
Terms like “experiences and background” and “any unique circumstances” typically refer to noncognitive factors designed to give preferred minorities with lower grades and scores an admissions boost.
Nevertheless, the study shows that whites are given an edge as well. The question is, will Americans of Asian descent rise up against this practice?
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Last month, a federal judge ruled that New York City’s Fire Department (FDNY) discriminated against blacks and Hispanics with its recruitment exam. The court contended that paper-and-pencil tests given from 1999 to 2007 unfairly excluded minority recruits. (Source)
In plain-speak, it means blacks and Hispanics performed disproportionately poorly on the exam.
In 2007, the Department of Justice filed a suit against FDNY for violating the Civil Rights Act, claiming that two pass-fail written exams and the rank ordering process disparately impacted minorities and weren’t job-related or consistent with business necessity. The Vulcan Society, a fraternal organization of black FDNY firefighters, joined the lawsuit.
At the time, the black firefighter’s group claimed that “the SAT-style test has little to do with fighting fires and has prevented many black and Latino applicants from getting the jobs they deserve.”
I’m reminded of an article author Shelby Steele wrote a decade ago about a racial preferences debate between the American Civil Rights Institute’s Ward Connerly and law professor Christopher Edley on C-SPAN. In Harper’s Magazine via (CIR-USA.org), Steele lamented over what he called the “disappearance of the black individual.” A black Harvard student rose to “challenge” Connerly during the question and answer period. Steele writes (emphasis added):
“Now consider what this Harvard student is called upon by his racial identity to argue in the year 2002. All that is creative and imaginative in him must be rallied to argue the essential weakness of his own people. Only their weakness justifies the racial preferences they receive decades after any trace of anti-black racism in college admissions. The young man must not show faith in the power of his people to overcome against any odds; he must show faith in their inability to overcome without help. As Mr. Connerly points to far less racism and far more freedom and opportunity for blacks, the young man must find a way, against all the mounting facts, to argue that black Americans simply cannot compete without preferences. If his own forebears seized freedom in a long and arduous struggle for civil rights, he must argue that his own generation is unable to compete on paper-and-pencil standardized tests.”
This is one of the many things that bother me about preferences. They require, in no uncertain terms, lowering standards for blacks. Proponents must argue—like the cocky black Harvard student—that blacks cannot and should not be expected to compete with whites or held to the same standards. Individuality is erased, and group entitlements emerge.
Preference proponents implicitly make the case, despite their purported support for racial equality, that equality is not what they really want. Special treatment is the goal, disguised behind euphemisms like diversity.
There was a time that black America believed in individuality and longed to be treated as free men and women. Today, it’s the opposite. Once people realized how advantageous it was to re-assert group membership, the importance of the individual was minimized. Those who try to assert their individuality over racial group membership must face the Uncle-Tom-epithet consequences.
“[T]here is another ‘little gulag’ for the black individual,” Steele writes, “He lives in a society that needs his race for the good it wants to do more than it needs his individual self. His race makes him popular with white institutions and unifies him with blacks. But he is unsupported everywhere as an individual. Nothing in his society asks for or even allows his flowering as a full, free, and responsible person. As is always the case when ‘the good’ becomes ascendant over freedom, and coercion itself becomes a good thing, the individual finds himself in a gulag.”
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The American Civil Rights Institute’s Ward Connerly was recently quoted in several news stories. Examples below.
Commenting on the Henry Louis Gates story, Connerly said, “We’ve reached a point where white males are saying, ‘We’ve done all that we need to do in terms of treating black people with kid gloves and giving them deference. Now let’s do what’s right regardless of race.’” (Source)
In the Seattle Times, Connerly said this about the Ricci v. DeStefano case: “What has changed, and it’s been growing, is frustration on the part of whites, especially white males, about remaining silent on what they regard as very unfair.”
(Photo source: Stephen Crowley/The New York Times)
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