Connerly continues effort over college admissions

By LESLIE FULBRIGHT
Thursday, November 02, 2006
California's champion of color-blind college admissions has made his way to Michigan and is aggressively promoting a measure similar to Proposition 209, which outlawed the use of racial preferences in admissions to California's public colleges 10 years ago.

Ward Connerly, the former University of California regent, wants to end affirmative action nationwide and has spent the past decade on campaigns seeking bans on race-based college admissions.

"Affirmative action has perpetuated the notion that black people aren't as smart," he said.

After heading the campaign for Prop. 209, which passed with 54 percent of the vote in 1996, he pushed a similar initiative in Washington state that passed in 1998 with 58 percent.

Now, Michigan voters will decide Nov. 7 whether to end affirmative action in their state's renowned public colleges and its public schools and other state agencies, and Connerly is helping the campaign. Polls conducted earlier this month showed the initiative in a dead heat.

"If we can win a blue state like Michigan, it is a powerful message that preferences are not embraced; it will hasten the demise of treating people differently," said Connerly, who says he will persist until affirmative action is banned in every state. "I hope we don't have to go anywhere else. I really don't want to go to states one by one; it's like running for governor."

The business consultant was called to Michigan by Jennifer Gratz, a 29-year-old white woman who began campaigning against affirmative action after she was denied admission to the University of Michigan for fall 1995. In 1997, she filed a lawsuit arguing that her rejection was unfair.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2003 in Gratz's case that the University of Michigan's point system for admissions was unconstitutional, but it did not prohibit the school from using race as a factor.

"I called Ward Connerly the day after the Supreme Court decision and asked for his help in Michigan. I had never been involved in a political campaign, but I felt like something had to be done," Gratz said. "We coordinated things together, and he has been a mentor and a supporter since that point. He has been there for us every step of the way."

Even before Connerly, who describes his own ethnicity as mixed, showed up, a coalition pulled together to oppose him.

"We knew three or four days in advance that he would be at the university, so we got 200 organizations together to talk about why people should vote no," said David Waymire, a political consultant and spokesman for the group now called One United Michigan. "The ban has been a disaster for the state of California, and that experience proves we don't want to go there."

Civil rights groups like the NAACP and the Urban League have visited Michigan in recent weeks to oppose the initiative. And experts from UC Berkeley have gone to speak about the dropping proportion of African American students in California's public colleges and universities and the impact the ban has had on admissions at law and medical schools.

Called the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, the ballot measure would make it unlawful for all public employers and public contractors, as well as public schools, to discriminate or grant preferential treatment on the basis of race, ethnicity, skin color, gender or national origin.

Supporters say affirmative action is a thing of the past.

Gratz said the measure's supporters believe all people should be treated according to their character and accomplishments rather than their skin color. She said she and other white Michigan residents feel they have been the victims of discrimination in hiring and college admissions as public bodies try to recruit more black and other minority students or employees.

A poll by the Detroit Free Press showed that white men are the only large voting bloc in which a majority supports the initiative and that African Americans overwhelmingly oppose it. Michigan's population was 80 percent white, 14 percent black, 2.3 percent Asian American and 3.8 percent Latino of any race in 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Opponents of the measure argue that Michigan _ like most of the United States _ is already segregated and that removing a tool that ensures integration and diversity in the state would be devastating, especially to the University of Michigan.

"He doesn't care about civil rights or people of color or improving the school system; he cares about his business proposal," Waymire said, referring to Connerly's consulting work.