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"Scam" ads the norm Trail Mix: Hillary haters spam cyberspace Gunning for the center Democrats make Hillary legit The blundering pundit Don Giuliani Campaign video: |
A "poison" divides us | page 1, 2 The whole debate about college admissions really is more a class argument, in my view, than a race argument. Because we have the largest share of people, who are low and moderate income for the most part, supporting the higher education of a small number of people, especially at the select institutions. That's why the whole debate about who gets into Berkeley, I think, is a very misleading one. If we really wanted to help black people -- let's just take black people for an example -- we would not be putting so much emphasis on getting them into Berkeley as we would giving them the equivalent money to go out and buy their own cabs, or get the tools to become an electrician or a plumber, or the money to take a vocational course.
Because the overwhelming majority of people, regardless of their color, are not going to go to college. But we are so preoccupied with the concept of making sure we get X number of black kids into Berkeley that we totally overlook the masses. It costs $12,000 a year to subsidize sending a student to the University of California. It takes three taxpayers to pay that $12,000 in California. If we said we think it's important that every person get a start in life -- I'm not proposing this, but I'm saying it as a way to clear our thinking a little bit -- every person in life deserves something to jump-start them into being productive. And if we're going to spend $48,000 to $60,000 to educate somebody at the University of California, let's say we're going to give you effectively a line of credit of $25,000 to use however you want to pursue you're dream of becoming productive. If you want to be an electrician and you need to take two years of electrical engineering at a vocational school, OK. We're going to finance that. But we don't even look at that. If I proposed that, they'd think I was a kook, because we're so hung up on the notion that you either go to college or life's a failure. And if you don't get into Berkeley and you're black, there must be some institutional racism there. Don't you ever feel that some of your political allies are using the anti-affirmative action initiative to mask their hostility to any forms of minority outreach? Sure, there are those. They are very small in number, but I've seen them. There are people who I talk to who, as I listen to them, that I come away thinking, "I don't like this person's motives." I'm in the unique position of being kind of like the filling of a sandwich. I get to talk to those and interact with those who agree with me, who are fellow quote conservatives, and I also interact with those who hate my guts. I'm kind of caught in the middle, because I don't want to end all affirmative action, and I think the record proves that with my support of the outreach programs that we're doing big time in California. But at the same time, I think that preferences are bad and wrong and that they do exist. There are agencies that started out with the best of intentions of simply eradicating discrimination. They then did not accomplish their objective, and so they ratcheted it up a little more, and then they started imposing goals and timetables. They still don't get their objectives, and so they ratcheted it up a little more, and say, "Manager, if you don't meet your goals, you won't get your merit pay increase," making those goals the functional equivalent of quotas. Why did you choose Florida for your next initiative? I think Florida is a state with the same elements of diversity as California, an urban state, a Southern state with a large black presence. And I believe that this problem of race in America will only be solved when black people come to the conclusion that the time is right. Whites are largely afraid to force the issue, and black people, many of them, many of us, feel kind of caught back in the '60s. Many people don't really trust whites. In Florida, one thing that comes up is "Well, it might be a better plan than what we have now, but we shouldn't have to trust you." So I thought of all those things plus the fact that it was going to be a hotly contested state in the presidential race. The effect of having it happen in the fourth largest state with all those other factors that I mentioned is tremendous. What's the next state on your list? We've been looking at Michigan, Oregon, Colorado. A lot depends on what happens with Florida's Supreme Court on our initiative. And what's the prognosis in Florida? It could go either way. I'm optimistic. I can't see how in the world they can say that this doesn't represent discrimination. In California, in Washington, in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the language is almost identical. And if everybody else can come to that conclusion, then why wouldn't the Florida Supreme Court come to that conclusion. But it is an activist court. It's a court that really doesn't want this on the ballot. The whole establishment there doesn't want it on the ballot. So it could go either way. In your book, you mention some unpleasantness that transpired between you and Vice President Al Gore during a White House meeting. The encounter was a distasteful one. Gore made the statement that "we are all prone to bigotry," and that "there is evil that lies coiled in the human soul." And I said that this is truly frightening. The premise of being a democracy, of being a free people, is that we're basically good people. And that doesn't mean that we're all good or that we're going to do good things all the time, but I think that the premise is that we are good people, and that we don't need our government to keep us from ourselves. President Clinton, I think is genuinely a good person [who] genuinely likes people, and that seeps out of every pore of the man. But Vice President Gore, when he shook my hand, he kind of crushed it. Typically, public officials, since they shake hands so much -- and I'm now doing this a lot -- you learn not to overuse your hand. The first thing that you're told is firm, not loose wrist, but firm. But don't overdo it because you end up sending out the wrong signals, and you end up having your hand get weary. This man literally crushed my hand. And I came away from that with the impression that he is a hateful man, and nothing that has happened since then has softened that impression. When he goes to black churches [he] talks about those who want a color-blind society having their blinders on. He went to Washington, he went to Florida and singled me out. He said, "Florida doesn't need Ward Connerly here," and he gets really personal in his attacks. And I've seen that ever since that meeting in the way he approaches this issue. It's not just that he disagrees with you, he wants to hammer you into the ground and cut you off at the knees, it seems to me. And I just have the impression that he's just a hateful man.
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