Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences.(Review)

Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences, by Ward Connerly. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2000, 286 pp., $24.95 hardbound.

This is the story of a citizen propelled by circumstances reluctantly to take a leading role in the politics of race in America. The story offers useful instruction for those who may be drawn into battle in this arena. The instruction takes the form, not of scholarly analysis or statistical data, but of the common-sense observations of a practical man undergoing a political education in a school of hard knocks. Behind these observations is a decency, firmness of purpose, and generosity of spirit that amount to lessons in themselves--Lincolnian lessons in the kind of character and understanding that might turn a good fight into a victory for good.

Following his appointment by California Governor Pete Wilson to the University of California Board of Regents in 1993, businessman Ward Connerly was presented with clear evidence of pervasive racial discrimination in UC admissions and hiring--a long-term system-wide policy then still being publicly and privately denied by UC officials. Connerly concluded that it was his duty as a regent to investigate this policy for the simple reason that "This is wrong" (124). It was a decision that changed his life and may yet help to change his country.

When further evidence revealed an even deeper and more radical policy of racial discrimination in the UC system than Connerly had first realized, he determined to propose two resolutions to the Board of Regents prohibiting racial preferences in admissions (SP-1) and in employment and contracting (SP-2) throughout the UC system. In a highly publicized vote, amid widespread protest and threats of violence, these resolutions passed on 20 July 1995, and racial preferences in admissions, hiring, and contracts have since been officially prohibited in the UC system.

While Connerly was busy battling racial preferences in the University of California, N.A.S. members Glynn Custred and Tom Wood were organizing to put an end to racial discrimination in all California public employment, contracting, and education. Their effort was known as the California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI). It proposed to amend the California Constitution with language adapted from the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964: "The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group, on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public contracting, or public education" (161). Because Connerly had become recognized as an effective opponent of racial preferences in California, the struggling CCRI movement asked him to assume the chairmanship of their organization. Though not inclined to enter yet another, and even more painful, political battle, Connerly became convinced that the fate of his victory on the Board of Regents may be linked to the fate of CCRI. UC Regent Roy Brophy, hoping for a failure of the Civil Rights Initiative, had written in the Sacramento Bee of his plans to take the occasion to introduce a resolution rescinding the Regents' vote against racial preferences.

In November 1995, despite Pete Wilson's warning that "you'll get attacked in a way that will make the regents thing seem like kid's stuff," Connerly accepted the chairmanship of a still very uncertain CCRI (167). By February 1996, he was able to submit to the California Secretary of State the number of signatures required to qualify the initiative for the November ballot, as Proposition 209. "At some point during the 209 campaign," Connerly writes, "I stopped being a private citizen and became a public figure" (203), a transformation to which he had not aspired and in which there was little to relish. He also learned in the course of this campaign that in today's America racial politics is unavoidably national politics, that any good done within the Board of Regents could be undone by broader forces in California, and that no progress in California was secure if it stopped at the Oregon and Nevada borders. He concluded that "Once you embark on a cause like the one [he had] undertaken, you have to keep advancing, if only to protect the ground you've already won" (205). Proposition 209 passed and became, and remains, part of the California Constitution. Soon after the passage of Prop. 209, Connerly joined with Thomas "Dusty" Rhodes to form the American Civil Rights Coalition and the American Civil Rights Institute, "non-profit organizations that would take the fight against preferences national" (205).

Connerly began a national speaking tour both to galvanize those who agreed with him and to try to win over "people who reflexively hated me and what I believed," that is, primarily university audiences (206-7). The Republican Congress had shown no "stomach for the fight," so Connerly was left to wage the fight state by state (211). This led him to Washington, Texas, and Florida where equal rights movements were already active or in prospect. In Washington, he helped achieve passage of 1-200, an initiative similar to Prop. 209. In Texas and Florida, after initial setbacks, his efforts continue at the time of writing.