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A "poison" divides us
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March 27, 2000 | With the rallying cry "two down and 48 to go," Connerly has moved on to Florida. In the Sunshine State, Connerly's mission has proved to be problematic for Republicans, particularly Gov. Jeb Bush. Like his "compassionate conservative" brother George W., Jeb once enjoyed as friendly a relationship with the minority community in his state as any Republican governor could hope for. But that good feeling is now being undermined by Connerly's campaign. Connerly, however, believes that affirmative action is the real poison ruining relationships between blacks and whites. So he is trying to undo it one state at a time. In an interview with Salon, he defends his initiative, and his new book, "Creating Equal."
What led you to write this book? I started [it] five years ago just as an act of frustration when I was bringing this issue up as a regent. One of my colleagues attributed my beliefs to some sort of political ambition, you know, that I was preparing to run for office in California. That certainly was not the case. I've found that it is very difficult for black people to let go of what I believe is a crutch. No matter how much you can demonstrate that affirmative action is touching a very few people, there are those who believe that their lives will be over without it, and that all that they've accomplished is a result of their being "affirmative action babies." So I wanted to show that I, for example, who grew up with modest means, am rather typical of a lot of black people, many of whom in prior generations had nine, 10, 11, 12, 13 kids in the family. The husband dies or leaves the house, the wife still raises the children and they end up leading productive lives because of very strong families. Yet there's this myth that we're all dysfunctional. [I also wanted] to get the nation to start confronting the broader issues of race: interracial marriages, what does it mean to be called a minority, and affirmative action as opposed to preferences, and the issue of profiling. I wanted to reveal my own experiences in the context of all those issues, and to suggest to the nation that we need to start rethinking this concept of race, and to get beyond it. What is the difference between affirmative action and preferences? In my view, using the powers of government to make sure that people are not discriminated against, I think that was the original intent of affirmative action. I think that is legitimate. Making sure that people know about job opportunities by advertising in different newspapers, even going to a Cinco de Mayo fair and letting people know that jobs are available or that public works contracts are being let. Using affirmative action to -- as we're doing at the University of California -- in a non race-based way to provide outreach to under-performing schools. Those things are affirmative action. But when it gets to the point where you are making a selection for someone to be admitted to the university or someone to be hired for a job, and to have one standard for someone who is black and another standard for someone who is white ... I think that's a preference. And I think that those things are wrong, and those things are being applied in many government arenas for the purpose or rationale of trying to level the playing field, trying to achieve diversity. [B]ut I think that when you apply different standards to people, that's discriminatory, no matter what you want to call it. If, as you say, affirmative action touches a very few people's lives, why do you feel it's so important to roll it back? I think it's poisonous. I think it poisons the relationships between people based on their groups and based on the perception that some are being left behind because of it. I can't tell you the number of people who are white and male who say that "I would've been here except for affirmative action." There's no evidence of that, but there's that perception in their minds. And perception becomes reality. It poisons relationships and builds resentment, often needlessly. It also marginalizes people, if you are female or you are black or you are Latino. Asians somehow largely escape this stigmatization possibly because of the stereotype that Asians are better performers academically. But those of us who are in that group called "minority and women," if we are performing in any role that is not seen as being a traditional role, the impression is that we did not get that by reason of our own accomplishment. We got that because of somebody giving it to us, because of affirmative action. The same kind of talk you describe from white men comes from some in the black community who say "I could've gotten that job if it weren't for 'the man.'" How would these perceptions go away just by eliminating affirmative action? I think that both groups are blaming something else. There is discrimination, but I think a lot of black people invoke racism in a chicken-little sort of fashion. They overstate it. On the other hand, a lot of whites blame affirmative action for something that had nothing to with it. They lost a job because somebody better got it. But as long as you have this paradigm where people seem to be using race and gender as a means of making hiring decisions, as long as they keep uttering this mindless blather about "we've got to achieve diversity," it kind of taints the whole process. And the decisions that they're making would be no different, in my view, if they just discarded the whole system. If you argue that eliminating affirmative action helps create a true meritocracy, what about cases like George W. Bush who got into Harvard and Yale with a C average? If it's in the private sector, I don't necessarily like it, but I don't care what happens [there]. But when it comes to government, one's connections should not play a role. That's precisely why I offered a resolution successfully [at the University of California] to eliminate these "legacy admits," the preferences that we were giving to the sons and daughters of U.C. alums, as well as what I call the fat-cat preferences, in which a certain number of seats were assigned to the chancellor that he or she could fill solely on the basis of who picked up the phone and called the chancellor. At Berkeley, we gave one to the son of a king. The argument was, well, this will really help diversity. Baloney. It wouldn't help diversity. It probably rewarded the U.S. senator who called and asked for that favor. It's the public sector I've been addressing. I haven't been directing attention to the private sector. I'm talking about government, and how government treats its citizens. In your book, you say that encounters with helpful whites helped shape your opinions about racial preferences. Do you see how a black person with different types of experiences might reach another conclusion about affirmative action? Absolutely. I've never discounted the experiences of somebody else. We are creatures of our own experience. We begin early in life to form attitudes about other people based on our own experiences. What I am saying is that my experience refutes the notion that you can only learn from people who look like you, and that America is not racist at its core. There are bigots; there are racists. They come in all colors, believe me. But America is not a racist society. [But] I can't tell you the number of campuses that I've been to where I meet bright black kids who say "America is racist". How do you get to an institution like Harvard or Yale without encountering the helping hands of people who are white or Asian or Latino?
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