Five more states may be voting this fall on affirmative action

03/27/2008

Businessman Ward Connerly of California marches on with his effort to ban the practice across the nation.


By PETER SLEVIN,
Washington Post
March 26, 2008


CHICAGO -- Sixteen months after voters in Michigan voted to kill affirmative action in the public sphere, opponents of preferences based on race and gender are pushing five more states to ban the practice.

Foes of affirmative action, which is meant to address current and historical inequities, delivered 128,744 signatures to Colorado authorities earlier this month. Similar efforts in Arizona, Missouri, Oklahoma and Nebraska are circulating petitions as civil rights groups and educators are mobilizing to defeat the measures.

The initiatives are spearheaded by Ward Connerly, the nation's most prominent opponent of affirmative action, who said he has raised about $1.5 million for the campaigns. He sees the November ballot initiatives as the next step in his drive to end preferences in public education, hiring and contracting.

"Without any doubt, we have to understand that race preferences are on the way out," said Connerly.

In the states where Connerly's self-described "civil rights initiative" appears on the ballot, voters are likely to see it alongside the name of the first black or female major-party presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., or Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. Connerly contends that the success of the two shows that preferences are no longer necessary "to compensate for, quote, institutional racism and institutional sexism."

Connerly, a prosperous and conservative black Republican, said he contributed $500 to Obama's campaign to honor him "for trying to take race out of the body politic." Obama opposes Connerly's approach to affirmative action.

So does Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. "As we feared, Connerly's attack on equal opportunity in Michigan has metastasized. We know that most Americans support equal opportunity. They know that diversity is good for business, good for the classroom and ultimately good for the country."

Tim Asher, a former college admissions officer, is leading the Missouri ballot effort. He described affirmative action as a form of discrimination because it permits or requires the use of diversity as a factor in employment, contracting and university admission. He said diversity can be achieved through programs that target economically and socially disadvantaged people of all races.