Ward Connerly: The real civil rights deal
I’ve been honored to know Ward Connerly since his first days fighting against racial preferences during the Prop. 209 fight in California. His autobiography is here. Connerly has not only battled the race demagogues on the Left and the affirmative action apologists in the media, but also spineless GOP establishment leaders who would rather pander to the “diversity” lobby than fight for true equality under the law. Connerly’s American Civil Rights Institute has details of Connerly’s anti-preference legislative successes here.
Their next step? A “Super Tuesday of Equality” ballot drive in five states that has the race hustlers and open-borders types up in arms.
Via the LA Times, which can barely contain its panic:
Intent on dismantling affirmative action, activists in five states have launched a coordinated drive to cut off tax dollars for programs that offer preferential treatment based on race or gender.
The campaign aims to put affirmative action bans on the November ballot in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma. The effort is being organized by California consultant Ward Connerly, who has successfully promoted similar measures in California, Michigan and Washington.
Supporters of affirmative action say the initiatives will be hard to block, given that Connerly has a proven ability to raise funds and persuade voters, even in more liberal states.
“They’ve targeted states where there’s a white majority electorate and a vocal, if small, extreme anti-immigrant right wing,” said Shanta Driver, who runs By Any Means Necessary, a coalition that defends affirmative action. In such states, she said, “it’s extremely difficult for us to win.”
Connerly’s campaign — which he calls Super Tuesday for Equality — could also get a boost if the presidential ballot includes an African American or a woman. That would help him make the case, he said, that the playing field is level and minorities no longer need a hand up.
In most states, Connerly has until spring or summer to collect enough signatures to put the measures on the ballot. His allies have already submitted more than 140,000 signatures in Oklahoma. Petitions are circulating in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri and Nebraska. (The number of required signatures varies from about 76,000 in Colorado to about 230,000 in Arizona.)
If successful, the ballot measures would ban a broad range of programs designed to overcome the nation’s legacy of racism and discrimination.
One such program, in Tucson, treats minority- and female-owned companies as the low bidders for some construction contracts, even if their proposals come in as much as 7% higher than a bid from a firm owned by a white male rival. Academic mentoring targeted at specific groups, such as female engineering majors or Latina teens, would also be banned. The University of Colorado would have to cancel or redefine more than 100 scholarships because they award funds based on gender or race.
As he has in the past, Connerly is promoting the ballot measures as “civil rights initiatives.”
Notice how the Los Angeles Times puts “civil rights” in scare quotes when it refers to Connerly’s efforts to eliminate race-based preferences, but not when referring to “civil rights” leaders fighting tooth and nail to preserve color-coded government programs and benefits.
On this MLK holiday, while the Dems scramble to claim the civil rights mantle, it’s men like Connerly and those who have voted overwhelmingly across racial, ethnic, partisan, and gender lines for anti-preference ballot measures who are the true champions of a colorblind society.
Support ACRI here–and keep an eye on their efforts in ‘08 as they continue to shake up the racial entitlement culture.
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I live in Oklahoma - I’ll be watching for this to be on the ballot in the fall.
Because I’m white, I can’t comment - it would be racist…
Thinly veiled bigot and/or racist connotation here. BAMN is the same group that calls for people to wear brown armbands to declare their state a sanctuary state. They also wanted the Jena six freed. Yeah, this group would defend affirmative action and would make it seem as if there is something inherently racist in what Mr. Connerly and ACRI are doing.
I encountered zero issues in my pursuit of higher education… Not one. If anything affirmative action, no child left behind, etc., places the recipient at a disadvantage, but let’s not get all caught up in what makes sense and that which does not.
I’m a big admirer of Connerly. He has taken enormous criticism from the race-baiters and fear-mongerers. He keeps on keepin’ on. Go, Ward!
It couldn’t be that voters find it UNCONSTITUTIONAL to give jobs, college admissions, etc., to unqualified people because they are black or female. Voters would never come to that crazy conclusion all on their own. Oh no. They have been brainwashed by Connerly. Seeing the obvious truth? No, that’s not what voters do. If they did, why they’d vote for the liberal position each and every time.
I will have to keep an eye out for a chance to sign that initiative here in Arizona …
The only color based thinking that should exist in this country is …
Red, White and Blue …
Great stuff Michelle. I nominate Ward Connerly for the Medal of Freedom.
30 pcs, I got stuck on the “extremely difficult” line myself. I think, & I could be wrong, that the concept of affirmative action has become less about race & more about a Nanny state making life “easy”.
It will be interesting to see where this goes.
Brooklyn red,
That’s news to me. However, I take your point. Welfare, Affirmative Action, Universal Healthcare, just one more step closer.
I like Mr. Connerly, He is very articulate,intelligent man and make’s a very good argument. I just want to know where a petition is so I can sign it, I’d like to see this on the ballot in Missouri and I know several other’s that would sign it too.
Should Obama make it to the White House, it creates an interesting situation - how can preferential treatment for African Americans as a disadvantaged minority continue when the president is African American? I’d hardly call that disadvantaged.
Everybody who come to this post today donate $25.00 dollars and let this organization know they are doing great work…..I am a female…and I am against affirmative action…or as I like to call it reverse racism.
Where I lived for many years, indigenous citizens are given all sorts of advantages. One example is university.
I was at med school and required an A- average to continue each year. A close friend who was indigenous only required a C- average to continue each year, purely because of their ethnicity.
Now years later, people hesitate to go to doctors of indigenous ethnicity because they are (understandably) doubtful about the level of health care they will receive from that doctor.
This also hurts the indigenous doctors who did maintain an A average through med school, and I know one of these individuals personally, and they are not happy about it.
So does affirmative action really help in the long run? It may be doing more harm than good, not to mention the resentment it created amongst non-indigenous students.
If I recall correctly, MLK was a registered REPUBLICAN!
His dream was of true equality, regardless of the color of one’s skin or one’s creed. It was not about preferences, entitlements, of the government-mandated inequality of affirmative action.
And let’s not forget, it was Dr. King who led a movement to get a government controlled by Democrats many of whose members vehemently opposed civil rights, to act.
It does my heart good to see Democrats honoring a Republican today.
Ward Connerly is a very brave man. A real civil rights hero.
When asked for “race” I like to put “human” and leave it at that if possible…
If Obama ever wins the White House, I hope I don’t hear the term, “African-American” continue with him. We don’t need Africans in the White House, and he isn’t African, we need Americans. I’m sick of hyphened Americans. Lord help us, with a government full of them.
Mr. Connerly,, thank you for your efforts in getting the ban passed in Michigan. If i may be so bold as to paraphrase Dr. King, what’s more important, color or character?
How true, how true
I’ve been following Ward Connerly for a long time (I live in CA), and I would highly recommend reading his book “Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race”.
I admire this man very much, and he’s been treated like dirt in this state.
Gotta love that revisionist History huh? Hopefully Mr. Connerly will be able to get his message out. I have a dream but it seems to be descending rapidly into the nightmare that is “progressive” liberalism.
OT How can progressive be an opposite of itself?
Funny how it is that they want to be treated equally, just so long as they are treated better and given more.
Equal is equal, and as long as there is an affirmative action, you will never be seen as equal, you will always be seen as something less that was allowed to gain equal by being advanced through affirmative action.
I say get rid of all race based everything, with the exception of medical care where appropriate. Some deseases truely are racist.
No affirmative action, no race based hate crimes, and so forth.
Let’s run down a few facts, shall we?
Why are the Republicans the racists again?
They’ve targeted states where there’s a white majority electorate
Earth to Shanta. That’s almost every state in the Union.
That’s the problem. They are running over the facts and backing up over them to see what they hit and then running over them again on their way to their socialist utopia where emotions reign supreme. How dare you confuse the issue with your facts!?
/Sarc Off
If thats not a racist statement I don’t what would qualify as one. I’ll be looking for the measure here in Arizona as well. As adjunct faculty at a University here I am absolutely against any policy that brings more stupid people into programs that are vital to the national health, regardless of skin color. In Phoenix alone we are short 8 to 10 thousand nurses. Giving a slot to someone who could not make the grade on their own merit is a slap in the face to everybody in the program. And dangerous to future patients if instructors are forced to pass inferior students.
I’m white and I don’t care if it’s racist to call Ward C. a good man. He has been and will continue to fight the good fight.
Everything I’ve read tells me he is black, not white.
I think of Ward Connerly whenever the antics of Jackson and Sharpton make me gag. He is the perfect antidote to the poison the latter two spread!
Du Bois was not white, but was one of the founders of the NAACP. I don’t know if he was a Republican, but he was an early civil rights leader and a pan-Africanist. I remember reading years ago some interesting debates between him and Booker T. Washington.
We need more black leaders who are willing to alienate their family and friends and their communities to stand up for what’s right.
W.E.B. Du Bois was black and from everything I’ve read, not a Republican. He was pretty much the opposite of MLK, Jr.
Du Bois was a Republican. MLK was most certainly not. He was a socialist and campaigned openly against Goldwater in ‘64. He was also closely allied to JFK in ‘60 due to Kennedy’s role in releasing him from a Georgia prison.
Connerly is doing a tremendous job, & it is not only the LA Times that is opposing him. There may be some Republican politicians somewhere who are supporting him, but if there are, I haven’t heard anything about it. Republicans as a whole no longer raise opposition to affirmative action, one more issue they have conceded to the Democrats. They would like to do the same thing with illegal immigration. I don’t think the Republican Party is beyond repair yet, but it is getting close.