Uncle Tom Ward Connerly back in the news
 

www.ca-dem.org January 20, 2003



Regent justifies segregation talk
UC students seek apology for Connerly's comments on racism made on CNN show
Thursday, January 16, 2003

By Michelle Maitre

SAN FRANCISCO - The University of California Student Association today is expected to ask Regent Ward Connerly for a formal apology for comments about segregation he made on a CNN television show, but they're likely to be disappointed.
"I'm not apologizing; tell them to go to hell," Connerly said, defending his comments as "an intellectual point of view."

Boalt Law School student Mo Kashmiri, a member of the UC Student Association, said the association objects to comments Connerly made on a Dec. 13 edition of "Wolf Blitzer Reports."

"Supporting segregation need not be racist," Connerly said during an interview on the furor surrounding former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. "One can support segregation and believe in equality of the races."

"In 2003, I don't think it's OK to justify segregation," said Kashmiri, who said the comments exacerbate ever-present student concerns about diversity on UC campuses.

Kashmiri said the student association voted unanimously to ask for Connerly's apology.

Students will address Connerly during today's Board of Regents meeting at UC San Francisco.

Connerly, however, who is perhaps best known for his push to end affirmative action at UC, said he opposes segregation.

His comments came during an interview in which he called for Lott to step down as the Republican leader.

But, Connerly said, "There's a belief that if you don't utter everything precisely as other people want to hear it, you're a racist .... Segregation is wrong, but for those who have an alternative view, I am not going to say that they are by definition racist."


©1999-2003 by MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers

FYI-- I added the "Uncle Tom" to the title. That was not listed on the original article. Obviously, I’m not a fan of his.

NinjaPoodle,

You are too much sorhor! And thanks for sharing that piece from the press. Yes, I know that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, however, what makes them think that we want to integrate with the likes of them. I don't know why members of the dominant group believe that people of color don't believe the same things about their ignorant and you can fill-in-the-blank ____. The dominant group is so afraid that a member of the minority group will gain just a little more power, prestige, and/or wealth.

Serioussigma:cool:

i ask a timeless question...
 

when i consider people such as brother connerly--who i am SURE benefitted from affirmative action-- i have to ask a simple question:
when will we ever learn to stop being puns in the game?!
(and don't ask, "whose game?"-- y'all know where i'm going with this one!)

Black students at Cal irked by lack of diversity
 

I'm posting this story here because this is the result of the Prop 209 and the actions of Uncle Ward..:mad:
*********************************************
Black students at Cal irked by lack of diversity
Underrepresented minorities steadily declining on campus
Charles Burress, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, May 10, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...AG546INNI1.DTL

****************************************

She is young, smart and black. And she is mad.

By one measure, Renita Chaney is fortunate indeed. She's one of the elite students who won a coveted place at the most prestigious public university in America: UC Berkeley.

But the campus that has long prided itself on diversity -- only 31 percent of undergraduates were white at the beginning of this school year -- has become increasingly less diverse for certain minority groups, particularly for Chaney and her African American peers.

"Where is the diversity promised to my community by UC Berkeley when we decided to come here?" she demanded at an April 22 rally in front of the chancellor's office after the latest fall admission figures were released.

Those figures vividly illustrated the continuing legacy of Proposition 209, the 1996 ballot measure by which voters banned affirmative action, or racial preferences, in public education, contracting and employment in California.

Chicano/Latino admissions for this fall fell 7 percent from last fall, American Indians declined 22 percent and African Americans dropped the most --

29 percent.

Of 8,676 acceptance letters, blacks received 211, or 2.4 percent. At Harvard, African Americans account for 10.3 percent of this fall's admissions. Blacks make up 6.7 percent of California's population and 12.3 percent of the nation as a whole, according to the 2000 Census.

"I don't want to say 'segregated,' " senior La'Cole Martin said in an interview, "but it's kind of discouraging when you don't see a lot of faces in the classroom that look like you."

Student Aquelia Lewis told the UC regents in March: "Ever since I stepped onto this campus, I've had to fight racism, negativity and questions about why I should be here."

The distress is compounded by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's austere budget and its proposed elimination of state funds for UC outreach programs, which are designed to recruit disadvantaged students to campus.

The shrinking number of black faces has created extra stress not only because of the resulting alienation but also because many African American students feel driven to do what they can to stop the trend.

Many of them devote long hours to volunteer outreach efforts in addition to their schoolwork and jobs.

Working at the recruitment and retention center "is like a full-time job on top of being a student," said senior James Drake. "If we didn't do stuff like that, things would be worse. It's really, really stressful having all these commitments.

"You would think being a Berkeley student, 'Wow! I get to do all these things' -- but being a black student, you can't really enjoy that."

Martin, an American studies major applying to law school, has worked part time since she came to Cal, while also volunteering to help pre-college youth in her Oakland community around McClymonds High School, where she herself benefited from UC outreach programs.

"A lot of us go to different places and volunteer our time, different schools and community centers," she said Friday before meeting with fellow seniors to plan next Saturday's African American Studies graduation ceremony, a major annual event for families and members of the Cal black community.

"I want to be sure when I leave Cal that there will be students like me coming here."

The new admissions numbers follow a long decline since 1998, the first year that the Proposition 209 ban took full effect.

Underrepresented minorities at Berkeley fell to 11.2 percent of entering freshmen in 1998 from 24.3 percent just three years earlier, a plunge rivaled only by UCLA's in the nine-campus UC system.

Among all undergraduates at Cal, the number of African Americans has fallen from 1,543 in 1995 to 924 this school year, or 4.1 percent of the current nonforeign total.

The latest admission figures have fanned a growing sense of alarm among not just African American students, but the black community at large.

Several dozen Bay Area black leaders invited UC President Robert Dynes to a private Oakland home Tuesday night to express concern about the declining admissions, particularly at UC's flagship campus, Berkeley.

"President Dynes is concerned about the representation of African American students and wants to understand personally the factors affecting the declines we've seen," said UC spokesman Hanan Eisenman.

For the UC system as a whole, African Americans received 3.7 percent of admission offers in 1997 (1,435) compared with 3.1 percent this coming fall (1, 469).

But acceptance letters don't reflect the entire problem. Many highly qualified black students are choosing not to apply in the first place, said UC Berkeley's director of public affairs, George Strait.

Applicants to Berkeley from King Drew Magnet High School in Los Angeles, a source of many gifted black seniors, fell 45 percent this year, Strait said.

"Part of that is they're going to Harvard," he said. Their decisions are influenced by UC's rapidly rising fees, cuts in financial aid and the "perception problem" that they won't feel welcome at Cal.

UC Berkeley is going out of its way to try to raise the numbers of African Americans on campus and to make sure they feel supported after they arrive, he said.

Chancellor Robert Berdahl, who is retiring at the end of this school year, is "going to spend his final weeks with this as his No. 1 priority," Strait said. The campus is expected to officially announce this week, for example, that it will finally establish the long-promised student multicultural center this fall, Strait said.

When the new admissions figures were announced, Berdahl called them "flat- out unacceptable."

Dynes wants to address all the sources of the decline, including the factors causing similar declines at other universities, deficiencies in the public schools and laws that need remedying, Eisenman said.

It's not an issue just for minorities. A newly formed group of white male students also is raising the banner. A dozen members donned "White Male for Diversity" T-shirts Wednesday at a campus plaza.

"We wanted to show the campus that diversity is important to the whole student body," said senior Adam Balinger.

Senior Melissa Geddis, another planner of the African American Studies graduation, said the problem starts in poorly funded public schools.

"The issue is California has a poor education system," she said. "A lot of the schools where the income and property values are low don't get the resources they need."

Chronicle staff writer Tanya Schevitz contributed to this report.E-mail Charles Burress at cburress@sfchronicle.com.

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

Re: i ask a timeless question...
 

:)

Re: Black students at Cal irked by lack of diversity
 

I went to Berkeley for grad school the year that Prop 209 was brought into effect. The numbers of admitted students apparently dropped drastically after the passage of the proposition. Minority numbers are indeed very low; however, I would just add that minority numbers are very low in many of what is deemed as the more elite schools and these others have NEVER even experienced a Prop 209.

We also had a really hard time recruiting other African-Americans to apply and accept any offers of enrollment that were extended due to all of the bad publicity. My stance was always: come anyway and get what you came for (a degree from a stellar university which is going to position YOU - b/c that is what is important is what YOU get out of it - to go far in life). The Prop was passed by the people of Cali, not the professors and such at Berkeley itself and was apparently worded very deceptively. Many Californians believed that they were voting for something entirely diff from what Prop 209 stands for in actuality.

At the end of the day, it's rough at Berkeley but it's rough in many of these schools (in terms of numbers of minorities - especially when we get into the realm of advanced degrees) so I would encourage students to not be discouraged from applying.
SC

Well, down here at UCSD, I'm told there are only 100 or fewer black students on campus. I found an old USA Today article that indicated the school (not my alma mater, but had they had a j-school, it would have been), admitted 33 black students in 2001 or so.

'God Bless' KKK, Says Ward Connerly
 

http://www.Diversit yInc.com/
Monday, November 6, 2006

'God Bless' KKK, Says Ward Connerly as He Leads Push to End Affirmative
Action:eek:

Why is a black man endorsing the KKK? Here's why you must vote in
Michigan tomorrow: Stop Ward Connerly and the so-called "Michigan Civil-Rights Initiative."
Watch the video.
Diversity Inc Editorial: Vote No on 'Civil Rights' Initiative in Michigan

Michigan voters face a misleadingly titled ballot initiative. If the
"Civil Rights" initiative passes, all forms of affirmative action will
be banned. In other words, to preserve affirmative action, voters have to
vote "no."

http://www.diversit yinc.com/ public/621. cfm?newsletter= 621_110606

Connerly's an idiot, but I'm thinking about his point re: segregation being beneficial. I'm thinking of HBCUs in particular. Could this be an example of segregation working to the community's benefit?

(Yes, I know that non-blacks can, and do, attend HBCUs. But the ratio of non-black students at these campuses is small, so for all intents and purposes, the campuses are still segregated.)

When white folks stop paying us to sell our souls. In 2004 alone, Connerly's ACRI (American Civil Rights Institute) received over $2.4 million dollars from conservative philanthropic foundations such as the Bradley, Scaife and Olin Foundations. Prop 209 was passed in 1996 so what do you think Stepinfetchit has been doing with this $2.4 million dollars? First, he has been opposing ethnic studies and ethnic student graduation celebrations at California's public universities. Next, he went on the warpath against HBCU's, HSIs (Hispanic Serving Institutions) and tribal colleges and finally he has been working on spreading Prop 209 across the country. At the end of the day, all that matters to Connerly is a profit.

See www.mediatransparency.org for a detailed list of all the folks that funded Connerlly and more information behind conservative media.

Thank you for the info Soror.