Ward Connerly
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Template:Unsourced Ward Connerly (born June 15, 1939) is a former University of California Regent, moderate conservative political activist, and businessman. He is best known for his controversial role as an advocate against affirmative action, which he regards as racial discrimination. His twelve-year tenure on the board of regents ended on January 20, 2005.
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Early life
Ward Connerly was born June 15, 1939 in Leesville, Louisiana. He was abandoned by his father at an early age. After the death of his mother, he spent his child living with relatives in Washington and California. He attended Sacramento State College, eventually receiving a bachelor of arts with honors in political science in 1962. While in college, Connerly was student body president and actively involved with Delta Phi Omega, later becoming and honorary member of Sigma Phi Epsilon Fraternity. In the same year he got married, from which he currently has two children. During his college years he was active in campaigning against housing discrimination and helped to get a bill passed by the state legislature banning the practice. After college he worked for a number of state agencies and Assembly committees, including the Sacramento re-development agency, the state department of housing and urban development, and State Assembly committee on urban affairs. It was during the late 1960s that he became friends with then-legislator Pete Wilson, who would later become governor in 1991. At the suggestion of Wilson, in 1973 he stepped away from his government job and started his own consultation and land use planning company. In 1993 he was appointed to the University of California board of regents.
Support of political campaigns against affirmative action
After his appointment to the University of California board of regents in 1993, Connerly began to expound his controversial views on affirmative action. After listening to Jerry and Ellan Cook in 1994, whose son was rejected at UCSF Medical School, Connerly was convinced that affirmative action as practiced in the University of California was in fact racial discrimination. Jerry Cook, a statistician, presented statistics purporting to prove that whites and Asians were systematically denied admission despite having better grades and test scores than other students who were admitted. This was never denied by the administrators of the UC system, and it led Connerly to propose abolishing these controversial programs, though his proposal would still allow social or economic factors to be considered. Realizing that continued financial support for UC was in jeopardy if children of high-income Californians continued to be rejected, the regents passed the proposal in January, 1996 despite protests from activist Jesse Jackson and other civil rights supporters. Some believe that UC was discriminating against Asian applicants because their numbers increased dramatically the year following the abolition of affirmative action. UC regents countered by developing new ways to assist historically disadvantaged students, including essay requirements that served to reveal the applicant's race and ethnicity.
In 1994, a movement started by a group of academics had begun with the intent to get a ballot measure passed banning these types of programs in admissions and hiring by any state public employer, school, or contractor. Connerly had been hesitant to join the movement because he claimed he was afraid of reprisals against his family and business but eventually by the end of 1995 became the chairman of the California Civil Rights Initiative Campaign Template:Ref and helped get the initiative on the California ballot as Proposition 209. It passed by a 54% majority, despite attempts to defeat it from groups such the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller foundations, the ACLU, and the California Teacher's Association. Connerly, in 1997, formed the American Civil Rights Institute to take their cause nationwide. It is important to note that the ACRI is not associated with nor supported by traditional civil rights organizations. Connerly first decided to support a similar ballot measure in Washington which would later pass by 58%. After Washington, he would turn his efforts to Florida in order to get a measure on the ballot in the 2000 Florida election. The Florida Supreme Court (that would later that year be overturned by the US Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore) put restrictions on the petition language, and Governor Jeb Bush later implemented, through a program called "One Florida," key portions of Connerly's proposal, helping to keep it off the ballot by accomplishing some of its key objectives through legislation. During this time, Connerly also became a supporter of an initiative to provide health benefits for domestic partners employed by the UC system which was barely passed by the regents.
In 2003, Connerly returned to the political spotlight in California, pushing a ballot measure he helped place on the ballot that would prohibit the state government from classifying any person by race, ethnicity, color, or national origin, with some exception. Critics were concerned that such a measure would make it difficult to track housing discrimination and racial profiling, activities that are the antithesis of a "color-blind society." Interestingly, Connerly promoted this measure as building a color-blind society. The measure was also criticized by newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times, who claimed it would hamper legitimate medical and scientific purposes. Connerly's poorly-funded and unpopular effort lost.
Following the 2003 Supreme Court rulings in Gratz and Grutter v. Bollinger, Connerly was invited to Michigan by Jennifer Gratz to support a measure similar to the 1996 California amendment. The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative MCRI will appear on the November 2006 Michigan ballot.
His Political Views
Ward Connerly is a moderate Republican who tends to be somewhat libertarian on social issues. Though he has actively opposed affirmative action, he has supported gay rights, such as providing health benefits for domestic partners employed by the UC system. He says his views on gay rights stem from his libertarian viewpoint that government should not infringe on personal liberties.
Racial/ethnic political controversy
Connerly's downplaying his African ancestry has been a subject of debate. Connerly says he is only ¼ Black with the rest a mix of Irish, French, and Choctaw. His downplaying his African ancestry has led to him being labeled a "self-hating black", or an Uncle Tom.
Connerly's opposition to affirmative action has generated controversy. Connerly believes affirmative action is a form of racism and that people can achieve success without preferential treatment in college enrollment or in employment. His critics contend that he fails to recognize the problems resulting from past racism, and that he fails to recognize that affirmative action programs can overcome the alleged residual effects of past discrimination on people of color. Connerly's supporters argue that Asians and modern African immigrants, despite having ancestors who suffered the same discrimination, and having come from very poor backgrounds, have had dramatic success without any need for racial preference programs. They contend that, despite past discrimination, Asian-Americans have seen their enrollment numbers skyrocket immediately following the abolishment of affirmative action admission programs. Critics of affirmative action also point out that the beneficiaries of these programs are overwhelmingly European-American women and middle-to upper-class minorities. Critics of Connerly have countered that many Asian and African immigrants had parents who were already educated and had already achieved middle class status in their countries of origin. This argument further supports the concept that a person's life circumstances are more determined by parental and ancestral status and by circumstances occurring far in the past than by any personal effort or responsibility, an argument that is flatly rejected by Connerly and his supporters.
The Detroit-based pro-affirmative action group By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) claims that Connerly, as CEO of Connerly & Associates, Inc., his Sacramento based real estate corporation, has benefitted financially from affirmative action programs in contracting, although BAMN has provided no evidence to support these claims. BAMN also claims that as a spokesman for the American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI) and the American Civil Rights Coalition (ACRC), Connerly earned as much as $400,000, by which BAMN questions Connerly's true motives. BAMN seeks a repeal of Proposition 209 and a return to affirmative action programs, especially in campus admissions. BAMN has recently opposed Connerly's efforts to put the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI)on the 2006 Michigan Ballot, and recently disrupted a Michigan Board of Canvassers meeting by loudly protesting and overturning a table [1].
Connerly has also been accused of hypocrisy for supporting domestic partner benefits for gay couples while opposing affirmative action. Connerly's supporters point out that this is not contradictory: he opposes discrimination, whether it is against gays, or any racial, religious, or ethnic group. In this regard, Connerly disparages the term "reverse" discrimination. To Connerly and supporters, racial discrimination is indistinguishable, regardless of which racial or ethnic group is the target. Similarly, the term "persons of color" is considered repugnant, offensive, and racially insensitive, as it implies that European-Americans, Asians, and other groups are somehow lacking in "color", by which is implied a special or superior virtuosity or status owing to the color of one's skin.
Another controversy arose after publication of Connerly's autobiography. Some relatives have claimed his accounts of an impoverished childhood were exaggerated or simply false. However, Connerly's aunt corroborates his account, according to Eric Pooley of Time magazine who interviewed the aunt. Pooley suggested that the relatives who contradicted Connerly’s anecdotes about his poor childhood might be doing so due to disagreements with his politics. This would seem to add to the charge that he "isn't black enough", that he also "isn't poor enough" to serve as a legitimate representative of the "black community", something Connerly himself has never claimed to do.
Connerly's message can by boiled down to rather simplistic concepts: We are all harmed by an obsession with group identity based on superficial differences in skin color and appearance, and we are especially harmed by government actions that reinforce these obsessive group identity behaviors. The key to progress in human relations is to let go of the past and to embrace our common-ness, not our differences.
Controversial remarks
Connerly has made controversial remarks regarding racial segregation on several occasions including the following:
On a CNN interview in December 2002 he said "Supporting segregation need not be racist. One can believe in segregation and believe in equality of the races." in response to a question regarding former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott.
He told the San Francisco Chronicle in September of 2003 "I don't care whether they are segregated or not." regarding whether his Proposition 54 could derail school integration efforts in California public schools.
External links
- Ward Connerly Biography
- Ward Connerly Critic Page
- Pro-prop. 54 Site
- Anti-prop. 54 Site
- "Racial Preferences Are Dead", interview in Reason by Michael W. Lynch.