Ward Connerly fools you into dismantling affirmative action, again at Racialicious

Ward Connerly fools you into dismantling affirmative action, again

by Carmen Van Kerckhove

The latest issue of Ms. Magazine, which hits newsstands today, has an interesting investigative report on Ward Connerly. It’s definitely worth a read.

(Those of you who have been with this blog since the Mixed Media Watch days may remember a regular feature we used to do called Ward Watch, in which we would affectionately refer to him “Moneybags”.)

Who’s Ward Connerly? Well, he’s a self-identified multiracial man who has made millions over the years by helping right-wing interests dismantle affirmative action.

Only he’s managed to do it by pretending to advance the rights of people of color. Like when he tried to fool multiracial organizations into supporting his initiative to do away with all racial classification (which would, not coincidentally, make it impossible to track racial discrimination).

Next week, on Super Tuesday, he’s trying to get anti-affirmative action ballot measures passed in five different states. Only in his usual sneaky way, he’s naming them “civil rights initiatives” to trick people into voting for them.

Don’t be fooled, people. Read on for excerpts from the Ms. Magazine piece:

Now, in what he is calling “Super Tuesday for Equal Rights,” Connerly is leading simultaneous efforts in five states to qualify ballot measures for the November election, each claiming to prohibit “discrimination” and “preferential treatment.” The deceptively named “civil rights initiatives” in Missouri, Colorado, Arizona, Nebraska and Oklahoma are really designed, like the California initiative, to ban affirmative action for women and minorities in public employment, public education and public contracting—although if Connerly has his way, the term “affirmative action” will never be referenced. What has never been widely reported in the coverage of Connerly’s campaigns are his ties to the large public-works contractors and construction-industry organizations that stand to benefit tremendously from eliminating programs that help level the playing field for women- and minority-owned businesses.

…An analysis of the two organizations’ IRS filings shows that between 1998 and 2006, Connerly and his business Connerly & Associates received a total of
$8.3 million—nearly half (46 percent) of the $18.5 million in total revenues reported in that period by the two nonprofits. In addition to salary and
benefits, Connerly receives expense accounts and fees for speaking, media interviews and consulting (see chart, page 38). In the last reported fiscal year,
2006, Connerly received $1.6 million— 66 percent of the $2.4 million in revenues his nonprofits generated that year.

…Connerly’s Civil Rights Initiative (CRI) campaigns use purposefully deceptive language to confuse some voters into repudiating policies they might otherwise support. Virtually all his campaigns purport to ban “discrimination and preference” on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. Even those who read the language of his initiatives with caution will not necessarily recognize a ban on discrimination or preference as a vote to end affirmative
action.

…In fact, when the city of Houston changed the wording of a Connerly initiative in that city to pose a direct question to voters about whether affirmative-action policies should be banned, the initiative lost. But when elected officials and courts allowed him to use his deceptive language in California and Washington, the initiatives passed.

Trackbacks & Pings

Super Tuesday vote warning « latin american princesa {LAP} on 30 Jan 2008 at 2:45 pm

[…] WARD CONNERLY FOOLS YOU INTO DISMANTLING AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, AGAIN […]
Looking into Ward « The Blog and the Bullet on 02 Feb 2008 at 1:11 am

[…] by Jack Stephens on February 1, 2008 Carmen Van Kerckhove blogs: The latest issue of Ms. Magazine, which hits newsstands today, has an interesting investigative […]

Comments

Paul wrote:

Connerly’s a shill and dangerous. However, if people cannot read and understand the ballot question then maybe the shouldn’t vote on it.

Posted 29 Jan 2008 at 8:23 am ¶
Paul wrote:

Addendum:
I personally have not voted either way on ballot questions of which I couldn’t make head-or-tails. Better to abstain than get it wrong.

Posted 29 Jan 2008 at 8:26 am ¶
Jen* wrote:

that dude is a bad man. a bad, bad man. sold his soul for some bucks.

as for abstaining from voting when you don’t understand - it’s a great policy, but I know a lot of people feel obligated to vote - whether they understand or not. The language does make a difference. But normally there is someone there to explain things to people if they don’t understand - at least back in GA when I voted that’s how it was.

it’s scary that this man has managed to finagle his way in like this.

Posted 29 Jan 2008 at 12:35 pm ¶
Orville wrote:

WOW this story is so shocking on many levels. Thanks for providing us with this information.

Posted 29 Jan 2008 at 2:36 pm ¶
Black Canseco wrote:

Ms. Mag aside (never been a fan) the funniest thing about Ward Connerly is who his money comes from–overwhelmingly white contributors and clients; almost as many of whom will call themselves “liberal” as those who claim to be “proud conservatives”.

Tim Wise is the only white person of major media rep that I can recall openly criticizing Connerly over the years. not sure why that is.

Moneybags is a funny name, but i think Ward’s conflated his own doubt, self-hate and delusion with america’s “all men are created equal” mythology into a crusade.

Posted 29 Jan 2008 at 4:58 pm ¶
Colin wrote:

Don’t believe the hype on liberals and racial equality — they believe just as much in the political correctness fairy tale nowadays as conservatives do. Why is this?

Race-conscious politics would cripple the status quo if there weren’t some way to demonize and marginalize it. Politicos, especially conservatives like Pat Buchanan knew this because they saw their efforts at marginalizing Dr. King as having largely failed in the view of history and even at the time.

This I believe helped lead to the current use of the term “political correctness” along with terms like “reverse racism” and “reverse discrimination” in the conservative mantra as a way of refocusing the race relations debate not on equality of opportunity but on legislatively literal equality, which in practice allows and ignores the latent inequality and one-sided privilege in American society. That also reframed the view, of many but not all, on Dr. King’s legacy from civic equality to colorblindness. To me, it’s what happens when one side frames the whole issue for years and years. I mean, what is the liberal/progressive alternative to the conservative colorblind mantra? I’m waiting….

Posted 30 Jan 2008 at 9:13 pm ¶
Jeremy Pierce wrote:

Consider the fact that most Americans don’t understand how affirmative action works. If you ask them if they support it, they’ll say yes. But then if you ask them if they would support lowering standards to let students into a program they would otherwise be less qualified to get into, they say they would oppose it. Yet that’s exactly what affirmative action is. It’s true that affirmative action can be supported by seeing race as a qualification, such that it raises the person’s qualifications up to the level of the other person being considered who is otherwise more qualified. But nonetheless most Americans see that kind of affirmative action as wrongful discrimination, because they don’t see race as a qualification.

So is it dishonest to want to remove the term ‘affirmative action’ from something voters will be voting on, when most Americans think of something else entirely when they hear that term? I don’t think so, and I’m not at all opposed to the “lowering standards” kind of affirmative action (as long as the standards aren’t lowered too much). It’s best to be precise about what you’re doing and see if people support it. That’s how democracy should work. It may well be that these laws aren’t precise enough, but it’s not because they lack the term ‘affirmative action’.

As for the idea that someone who is black must be a shill for opposing affirmative action, that’s nuts. It assumes monolithic views among black people, and it doesn’t allow for people to come to different views about what’s in the best interest of black people. I find that kind of behavior loathsome and reprehensible. There’s a debate over what is in the best interest of black people. Most blacks, at least in the U.S., think affirmative action is in the best interest of blacks and other non-whites. Many disagree, and I know quite a few of them. They think the practice insults their intelligence and doesn’t allow them to qualify on their own merits. They think it’s a kind of anti-black racism by keeping black people down. It’s fine to disagree with them on that, but pretending that they’re doing it in order to get a fat paycheck from the establishment is pretty silly and downright insulting. There’s a lot of helpful racial analysis on this site, but when it degrades to this kind of thing it’s pretty disappointing.

Posted 31 Jan 2008 at 7:29 am ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:

Jeremy -

Actually, that’s not quite true. I agree with you that the vast majority of Americans don’t know how affirmative action works.

However, your next points prove how murky affirmative action really is.

Ward Connerly is troublesome because he manipulates language to serve his ends - if the voters really are against affirmative action, let them see what they are voting for.

Race based quotas are illegal. That is not a part of affirmative action.

Race is a considering factor, not a deciding factor, particularly in college admissions.

People would probably vote against using race as a considering factor in hiring. However, most people would support recruiting initiatives that target under served communities.

Affirmative action also governs women’s educational initiatives and sports initiatives. Would people vote against those as well?

I was a direct beneficiary of affirmative action, but not at all in the way that you have phrased it above.

I was in a program called Upward Bound, which helps students from low-income backgrounds head toward college. Summers were spent on the campus of University of Maryland, taking classes and getting tutoring and job preparation skills. Sessions were held during the school year for SAT prep and tutoring. They paid us for attending - a $10 stipend per session, which seems like nothing to a lot of people. but really helps when your family has no extra money.

UB also paid for up to four college applications - again, application fees are a huge barrier to applying to college. Finally, UB served the under privileged community in my area - the program was predominantly black, but had large numbers of latino kids, as well as some white and asian kids as well.

Every quarter, we had to take an aptitude test, to chart our academic growth. We were told that this program exists because of Title IX funds, and that we had to take these tests every quarter and do well on them, or else the program would lose funding. (Since they gave us the exact same test every quarter, a lot of us would lose interest.)

We also shared space with another program, the Math and Science Regional Center, which seemed to serve white kids from poor rural areas. I am not sure if their program was under title IX as well.

In the job world, I have not been served by Affirmative action the way its opponents allege I should have been. Having worked in private sector most of my life - and for a portion of that time in recruiting - I have seen how people’s racist bias can easily factor into hiring. I have often wondered how my resume would be received if I used my middle name instead of my first name. But that’s an experiment for another time.

How affirmative action did help me - and my friends in the program - is by helping us realize our full potential. My friends in school had parents who paid for them to go to Kaplan and other SAT courses multiple times, something that was unthinkable for me as the cost was so prohibitive. We were given interview training - something that was imperative as many of our parents were not professionals and did not have those kind of skills to pass on to us.

We were shown online resources and learned to scour the web for internship programs. (I eventually landed a Smithsonian internship through my high school - that, more than anything else, is what allowed me to move successfully into professional job after high school.)

We were also given a space to discuss how racism works in society. Our counselors chastised us if they caught us using the n word. They would speak very frankly about opportunities, and stressed to us that while racism will be a factor in your life, it is something you can beat if you work hard enough and believe in yourself.

Are you telling me voters would want to veto these kinds of programs?

Still, I’m going to hold on to your first point. Maybe it is worth developing a piece on how Affirmative action plays out in the real world…

Edit: FYI - Title IX generally refers to sports programs under affirmative action. However, anyone who has worked in government will tell you that money gets tacked on all kind of strange places in order to make it out of the legislature.

Posted 31 Jan 2008 at 9:59 am ¶
bint alshamsa wrote:

Latoya, thank you for explaining how affirmative action truly works. My father has worked as an Upward Bound tutor for many years. Last year, they took all of the students for a week-long trip to visit several universities out of state. Many of these kids would NEVER have been able to afford to do this without the program. The thing is, they didn’t just take ANY kid. They only took children who had shown they were willing to work hard in the program all year long and exhibit exemplary behavior. In the end, all of the children in the program except for two wound up qualifying for the trip. When kids see that there is an opportunity for them to get to avail themselves of the experiences that less marginalized are usually kept out of, most will respond accordingly and work to reach their full potential. By having affirmative action programs, children are more motivated to work hard because they see that there might be an opportunity for them to achieve the American Dream even though it will certainly be a hell of a lot more difficult for them than for other groups in this society.

Posted 02 Feb 2008 at 10:09 am ¶
Jeremy Pierce wrote:

Programs like Upward Bound are what Bush called “affirmative access” in his 2000 campaign. I agree with you that most people don’t oppose that,even among people who oppose affirmative action. The affirmative action that most people oppose is treating race as a qualification in admissions or hiring, and some who oppose that only oppose it in college admissions and not in hiring (e.g. John McWhorter thinks it’s absolutely necessary in hiring for the reasons you point out, even though he thinks it harms its intended beneficiaries more than it helps in educational admissions).

You’re right that Ward Connerly is more extreme. He does oppose things like Upward Bound, because he thinks any race-conscious initiative is immoral and racist. I still maintain my thesis that it’s best to be precise about what you’re doing rather than use terms that could mean a number of different things (and ‘affirmative action’ is one of the latter), but you may be right that Connerly’s avoidance of that term still isn’t precise in the way I would want.

I also still maintain my point that black people who oppose affirmative action aren’t, by and large, doing it just to receive some benefit for doing so. Even Armstrong Williams, who was paid for speaking about certain opinions he had in violation of ethical standards in his profession, didn’t hold those views in order to get paid for them. He held those views long before he took money to defend them (it was about NO Child Left Behind, not affirmative action, but it’s an issue people have said the same thing about). People acted as if this showed that black opposition to affirmative action is merely shilling. I don’t buy it.

I know too many people who do oppose it on principle, ranging from a black philosophy professor, a middle-class black athlete raised in a white community, black immigrants who feel distanced from black Americans, to poor, working class students struggling through continuing education programs (including one who had been a drug dealer in his youth who missed my class for a few weeks because he was in jail but is now in a masters program). I can’t assume that it’s merely for the sake of being rewarded by whites for having the “white” opinion. All of these people felt either insulted by not being recognized on their merits or thought the establishment didn’t care to help them do well because they were going to have an easier time getting into a decent school. I even know of one case of someone refusing to do an in-person interview to avoid Harvard discovering he was black because he wanted to get in on his own achievements. (He did a phone interview, and he talks in a way that doesn’t give him away. He did get in, by the way.)

Posted 02 Feb 2008 at 10:07 pm ¶