TDR Exclusive Interview: Ward Connerly

Sunday, November 18, 2007

By Jeremy Pham

Ward Connerly is the founder and head of the American Civil Rights Institute, a national organization aimed at educating the public on racial preferences. He was the driving force behind California’s Proposition 209, which led to the end of the University of California System’s use of race in its admissions. Mr. Connerly is the author of the autobiography, “Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences,” and has been profiled on 60 Minutes, the New York Times, CNN, and many other major media outlets in America.

The Dartmouth Review: You played a huge role with Proposition 209, which was passed in California in 1996 to eliminate racial discrimination in public institutions. What initially drove you to see that legislation passed, and why are you so passionate about Civil Rights with respect to racial preferences?

Ward Connerly: I was born in the Deep South in Louisiana in 1939, and I have seen and experienced racial discrimination in my lifetime. I think it is wrong, and that it denies our country the greatest potential from every person. When I was serving on the Board of Regents of the University of California, it was déjà vu all over again because I saw the discrimination that was visited upon Asian students at Berkeley and UCLA. As the number of Asians, the Chinese and Japanese at Berkeley especially, began to increase, the administration expressed its concern that Berkeley would become “Asian” and all that. My own view is that, I don’t care if an Asian takes every seat if he or she earned the right to be there, and so I moved to get rid of racial discrimination and preferential treatment in the UC System. One thing led to another, and so I expanded to California’s Proposition 209 and before I knew it, I had a second activity in my life that concerned me. I really believe that everybody is entitled to be treated equally under the law by any government agency in the state. You and I don’t have a choice about whether or not we belong to the government. We’re required to pay our taxes and to be members of society, to support the government. Therefore, the government should not pick and choose who among us gets favored treatment. And all my initiatives that I’ve supported have been confined to the public sector, to the government. I don’t think private entities should discriminate, but that’s their business. But the government certainly should not.

TDR: Although Washington’s Initiative 200 and Florida’s Civil Rights Initiative followed within the years shortly after Proposition 209, it’s taken over a decade for the next piece of legislation to be passed, this time in Michigan. Why do you think that we as a society are so reluctant to be blind to racial preferences, and how come it’s taking a long time for other states to follow Proposition 209’s example and enact Civil Rights laws?

Connerly: I think it’s fair to say that the driving force behind this whole national movement to get rid of racial preferences is right here. The reason why we did not follow through with the victory in Washington in 1998, or go directly into another state, was because Jeb Bush was opposed to it. His brother was going to be on the ballot in 2000 and he didn’t want us on the ballot because it would have drawn more black people to the polls. So from 2000-2004, we were stalemated by the problems in Florida. Plus, Jennifer Gratz was waging her battle with the University of Michigan, and I was thinking that the Supreme Court might have stepped in and outlawed all preferences. We sort of dragged our fate and hoped that the court would have done the work that needed to be done, but that didn’t happen. So that’s why there was that hiatus, as you will, between 1998 and 2004. We restarted the campaign to get on the ballot in Michigan in July of 2003. Now, why the reluctance? That’s an excellent question. I think our society has been seduced into thinking that affirmative action as a form of preferences either doesn’t exist, that it’s all about leveling the playing field, or that it’s to the extent that there is a little bit of race preference, but it isn’t harming anybody. The attitude that this is benign is a pervasive one, and because of the history of slavery and Jim Crowe, most of those who are invested in the notion of affirmative action believe that it is simply trying to give an equal chance to black people. They don’t recognize the harm that it does in so many settings, that it is in fact a dorm of discrimination. By limiting the number of Chinese students who can go to Lowell High in San Francisco, by limiting the number of Asians who can go to Berkeley, UCLA, or UC Irvine, they don’t think of the negative side of it. They only think of the positives. They don’t think of the fact that it marginalizes black students by the presumption that they couldn’t get in without affirmative action. They don’t think about all those things. Over the years, the proponents of these policies have done a very good job of putting this all in sugarcoated language—“Inclusion,” “Diversity,” “Affirmative Action.” It was only when we were able to focus our attention on the fact that we were applying different standards to people, and that it is in fact a form of race preference, that the paradigm shifted in our favor.

TDR: You’ve been an integral part of the American Civil Rights Institute, which has helped other states implement laws such as Michigan’s Proposal 2 against racial preferences in the workplace, academia, and government. How do you go about educating the public about your organization’s goals, and what do you try to emphasize when speaking to a group that sees an inherent need for diversity?

Connerly: There’s a value judgment that people have to make. Do you believe that every person is entitled to equal treatment by the government, or do you believe that having this undefined goal of diversity building in the hands of a college admissions officer or a personnel director; do you think that their right to pick and choose who should be admitted and who should be hired is more important than an individual’s right to equal treatment? It’s a value judgment. I happen to believe, as do the majority of the people in at least three states and the Supreme Court in many decisions that individual rights have to trump the goal of some bureaucrat to diversity. Now, the Court did say in 2003 that with respect to a student body, diversity was a compelling objective. But more recently in the cases involving Louisville and Seattle, the Court went in a different direction. They said that using race in K-12 is unconstitutional. I believe that there’s nothing more sacred than my right to be treated equally by my government.

TDR: The New York Times recently wrote an article about “The New Affirmative Action” about how the former president of Princeton William Bowen discovered in an analysis of other elite colleges’ admissions records that while blacks and Latinos were 28% more likely to be admitted over a white or Asian applicant, low income students held no advantage whatsoever. What are the exact abuses of the system? How should public organizations function about such that admissions processes are comprehensive and fair?

Connerly: That’s a very comprehensive question with many implications. The first thing, and this is going to take a long time, that colleges public and private have to do, is change their outlook. They believe that the use of race, that racial “diversity,” which they often can’t even define, is more important than the principle of equal treatment under the law, and almost more important than helping those who really need help. They would rather help a middle or upper income black student whose parents went to college, and whose parents are professionals in the workplace and earn a quarter of a million dollars a year. They would rather have one of those people at their school than a low income white student whose parents don’t speak English, who are working 15 hours a day to support their family. It’s a different value system they have. I don’t know how we can convince them to rethink their values, but that’s really the business we’re about right now. When I eliminated preferences at the University of California, I did put in place supplemental factors that take into account which high school students attended, whether it was an underperforming school, did it offer honors courses, did a student ever have a parent go to college, what is the income? I would much rather put the emphasis on those than on race. I don’t want to put any emphasis on race. I would much rather help those who need it. Why do we put our public money into colleges? If you want to be a doctor or a lawyer, the public shouldn’t have to subsidize that. So the primary reason, it seems to me, that we have public universities, is to help those who can’t afford it on their own.

TDR: The same article also indicates that a rise in the number of low-income black freshmen correlated with a fall in the number of low-income Asian students, and a fall in the total number of low-income freshmen during this year’s matriculation cycle at UCLA. Despite this, there was no decline in the number of well-off freshmen. Do you think that we as a society have a moral obligation to cater to all races, regardless of the socioeconomic contexts of each group? Why do you think that it’s been so difficult to focus solely on other considerations instead of always putting one race at odds with another?

Connerly: The notion that we need to achieve “social justice” has been beaten into our psyche. We believe that the definition of a good society is whether or not it is meeting social justice, and universities see themselves as the ultimate expression of social justice. For them, there’s no higher calling than to be able to achieve social justice, and that is defined as whether or not they have a sufficient number of blacks and Latinos on their campuses, whether they’re discriminating against whites or Asians in the process or not. They don’t care. I had a chancellor in the UC system say to me as a Regent, “Asians already have their fair share. They already have 40%. Who’s being hurt just because we have 5% black and 5% Latino?” I was dumbfounded and so I said, “Let me make sure I heard you, say that again?” And he did. He didn’t see the wrongness of what he was saying! It didn’t occur to him that this was wrong, that there was in fact, discrimination against people occurring. That’s the problem with those who are so invested in this conflict. They don’t see it as being wrong. “It’s not wrong, we’re simply trying to help achieve justice for underrepresented minorities. And because Asians are already at this level, at 12% in California and 40% of the student body, what’s the big deal with what people are saying?” And there’s no way to bridge that gap between his way of thinking and my way of thinking because we have a different value system. I believe that every individual is entitled to an equal chance. If a basketball team has 10 black guys out there on the court, 5 on each team, and they got there because it was their choice to practice and excel at basketball, I don’t care. If some Chinese students emphasize studying and excelling academically and the outcome is they’re outperforming black students, I don’t care. They don’t see it that way. For them, the unequal chance occurred the day a black person was born. They believe that the mission of the government and of the university is to correct that presumed inequality. I don’t agree with that, I don’t even buy the notion that the presumption is accurate. My grandchildren, who are part black, part Native American, part Irish, and part Vietnamese, are entitled to an equal chance in my view. You should not say that Britney, who’s part Vietnamese, should have a different chance than Katy, who’s one of my grandchildren, who’s not part Vietnamese. They’re all entitled to be treated equally by their government.

TDR: According to the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard, Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., “more than two thirds of all Harvard’s black students were either the children or grandchildren of West Indians or Africans and very few of Harvard’s black students were the descendants of American slaves.” – Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. When we talk about racial preferences with the viewpoint that certain ethnic groups are overrepresented relative to their U.S. Census population, why is it that certain ethnicities get a pass? Do you believe that there’s a hole in the current process of classifying broader race groups in the context of admissions based practices?

Connerly: There are holes in the racial classification system, period. It all begins with the Census. First of all, the Census should not be used to classify its citizens on the basis of these five “food groups.” Let’s start with my own background. On my mother’s side, I’m French Caucasian, Choctaw Native, and Irish. On my father’s side, I am American Indian; I don’t know what tribe, Irish, and African. My wife is Irish and German. Some of my grandchildren; their mother is half Vietnamese. Why should any government agency try to classify us, and end up classifying two of my grandchildren as different from the other two? The government in any form should not be classifying its citizens. So that’s the first problem, and that leads to imperfections throughout the admissions processes. At UCLA for example, there was a student who said that when he first applied, he checked one box. After he was admitted, he went in and told the admissions people he wanted to change his race. So he went in and checked a different box because he could self-identify. So the classification system is wrought with fraud because anybody can check anything that they want. I know of a student who once said that she checked “Native American” because she was born in America! In her eyes, she was a native of America, not someone who was American Indian. Someone who was born in Africa, who recently migrated to America, who is genuinely African American, may very well be white. Someone who is light skinned, but has an African ancestor somewhere along the line, because of the one-drop rule, that person is considered black even though he or she may be as white as anybody else. The system is screwed up. There are certain Asian groups that are terribly disadvantaged. But everybody is lumped into one of what I call the five “food groups.” With that process of collapsing everybody, a lot of stereotyping occurs and a lot of assumptions are made because somebody is Asian and therefore, he or she fits the identity of every other Asian on the planet.

TDR: Several states have followed through California’s footsteps in implementing laws against racial preferences, quotas, and discrimination by any government entity, Washington with Initiative 200 and Michigan with Proposal 2 (Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI)). However, each legislation piece was met with resistance from pro-affirmative action groups, resulting in just around a 58% vote for each of the two initiatives. Do you still believe that a lot of progress will be made in the future such that racial preferences will no longer be used or needed in government programs, and that there’s a movement towards the end of affirmative practices? What do you make of the split between anti-racial preference and pro-affirmative action groups, and how will your organization go about promoting alternatives to racial preference advocates?

Connerly: We’re going to be trying to educate the people about the importance of the value of equal treatment as our country becomes more pluralistic all the time. People come here from all around the globe, with the demographics changing in many states. With all of these changes and with the lines of race becoming very blurred, it increasingly is making no sense to try to classify people on the basis of how they look. So we will be waging that. When people talk about race in America and about affirmative action, in the back of our minds, they have to understand that the debate is largely about the ambition of underrepresented minorities, mostly about black people. As they see more black progress, Barack Obama running for President, and Oprah Winfrey being one of the most successful popular figures in American life, as the public sees all that, they will hopefully, gradually lose their belief that black people are helpless and can’t succeed on their own because of “institutional racism.” This belief will recede into the background and people will give up the justification for affirmative action as a form of race preferences, which is already fragile, and has always been a fragile justification. There will always be however, an industry that will defend it. They’re in academia, they’re in the NAACP, and they’re in ethnic studies departments. Like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton though, with every passing day, they will fall out of favor. People will consider them irrelevant, and won’t rely on them as the “leaders” of a race. In fact, I already see that happening.

TDR: The 2007 Supreme Court landmark case, Parents Involved in Community Schools (PICS) v. Seattle School District further limited the usage of racial preferences and set a precedence against future affirmative action on the national level. Do you believe that the elimination of racial preferences is an appropriate federal responsibility for Civil Rights here in America, or that the issue would be better treated at the state level with respect to the unique circumstances in each jurisdiction?

Connerly: I’m an American citizen first. You and I have the right to travel across the border of any states we want. I can go from California into Arizona, or California into Oregon, and my civil rights ought to be the same as with any American citizen. That was the significance of the Civil Rights movement. There were people back in that era that were saying that each state had the right to decide whether they would segregate or how they would treat their colored people. But Dr. King and others said Civil Rights were a national priority. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 said that every American citizen was entitled to equal treatment without regard to race. So I don’t think this should be left to the state. I think that this is a national right. Ironically, when the court ruled in 2003 that it was constitutional for the University of Michigan and other colleges to pursue diversity, they said that this was up to the state. This was one of the things that were overlooked by everybody; they re-invoked the notion of States’ Rights.

TDR: With respect to Dartmouth College, do you think that we as a private academic institution have an obligation to end racial preferences?

Connerly: First of all, in many respects, I have libertarian instincts. I believe that what I do in my private business should be my business. The government, unless there is some overarching public interest, shouldn’t try and tell me who I should hire and pay, or what I should do. The government shouldn’t do that to a private entity. But this is Dartmouth. I will bet you that it’s getting some government money, whether it’s in the form of research grants, or whatever. If Dartmouth is getting some government money, I think that it should have the duty to expend that money the way a government agency would. If the government has forbidden itself from discriminating, then Dartmouth, if it’s getting government money, should be equally forbidden as well. Apart from the issue of federal money, there’s a moral consideration here. If you’re a private institution, and you believe in the principles of merit, you’re a part of the fabric of American life, and you know that the American Constitution has the 14th Amendment that guarantees equal protection of the law for every person and that the 1964 Civil Rights Act guarantees equal opportunity without regard to race, you as Dartmouth I would say, have the moral duty to abide by those laws. n

TDR Exclusive Interview: Ward Connerly

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