Affirmative Action - Ward Connerly
Hello Sorors and Sisterfriends,
I received this article via email concerning Ward Connerly. I am sure that you will find it very intesting. I would like to know your opinion on this article.
Peace and DELTA Love,
Ms. Public Service
2AG86SP
An Evening With Ward Connerly
04-17-00
By Kimberley Lindsay Wilson
Several weeks ago I, along with my husband attended a book signing
for Ward Connerly and his new book Creating Equal. For those, who don't
know Ward Connerly is the black University of California Regent who agitated
for the abolishment of affirmative action in the university's enrollment
policies.
After winning that fight he went on the become the chairman of the
infamous Proposition 209 committee. Proposition 209 struck down affirmative
action for the entire state. He then took his show on the road landing in
Washington State and now in Florida. Needless to say, Connerly has made a
lot of enemies. He's been publicly denounced as an Uncle Tom, and Oreo and
basically everything but a child of God.
I've said and written some harsh things about Connerly so when one
of the several women's organizations I belong to announced that they were
sponsoring a book signing for him at their DC headquarters I was extremely
curious to see the man in person to hear what he'd say. My husband and I
arrived 20 minutes early for the 7 o'clock event and right away we noticed
two peculiar things. First, the room was hot, steaming actually. I
watched, fascinated as huge sweat beads formed and rolled down the bald head
of an elderly man sitting in front of me. When I asked about lowering the
temperature I was told by the nervous looking hostesses that the air
conditioning was so loud it would drown out Connerly's voice and that they
could not open the windows. I realize now that they were probably afraid
that the voices of chanting protesters would be heard with open windows but
as it turned out they needn't have worried. The second strange thing of the
evening was the total absence of any black people. Except for the black
receptionist and the Hispanic janitor we met downstairs my husband and I
were the only people of color in the building. The folks in the meeting
room were all white and mostly middle aged to elderly. If we were any where
else I wouldn't have noticed but this was downtown DC! Washington or
Chocolate City as it is also known, is home to some of the most educated,
well-to-do and conservative blacks in the nation. Of course, it's a
democrat stronghold but it's not all that shocking to come across a black
republican here. Didn't Connerly, have any black friends who wanted to come
out and see him? Later, when I sat down and read his book I realized that
the answer is probably no. Connerly's relationships with DC's two most
famous black republicans, Colin Powell and J. C. Watts is prickly in
Powell's case, extremely strained-at best. Both men dared to challenge
Connerly's optimistic belief that white America is ready to be completely
color blind and he hasn't forgiven either one.
After filling my plate with finger food I shamelessly eavesdropped
on the conversations going around me. A tall, regal looking woman with a
frosted helmet of red hair and a St. John suit leaned over me to air kiss a
wizened old man sitting behind me. "Ward is a dear friend of mine," she
told him, "I wouldn't have missed this for anything!" A youngish woman in a
Chanel suit and fierce Prada shoes cooed, "I just love Ward. He speaks for
us!" I glanced at my husband who raised his eyebrow. The question we were
both thinking was "Us?" Being polite guests we said nothing. While filling
my water glass I listened to a reporter from the Washington Times ask a red
faced man in a Versace tie why he was there. "Ward's an old buddy of mine
from way back!," was the proud answer. It was obvious that this was going
to be a lovefest.
Finally, Connerly entered the room and made his way up the aisle to
the podium. He stopped to hug and be kissed by quite a few folks and
glanced nervously at us. I wondered if he thought we were going to jump up
and yell traitor at him. In his speech he almost immediately mentioned once
again that his wife Ilene is white. Since half the brothers in the NBA,
NFL, MLB and even the NAACP have white wives I wondered why it was necessary
to bring this up. Later, Connerly answered my unspoken question. He said
frankly that he rejects the concept of race. I think he actually just
rejects the concept that pride in one's own blackness is a good thing. He
states proudly on page 19 Creating Equal that "Left to their own devices, I
believe, Americans will melt and merge into each other" and "Since they
first set foot on the shores of the New World blacks and whites haven't been
able to keep their hands off each other."
Like many other blacks who aren't satisfied with the skin they're in
Connerly felt the need to remind his audience in both his speech and in
great length in the book that he is simply an American with brown skin. On
page 24 he says that "I'm black the way the way that Tiger Woods and so many
other Americans are black-by the "one drop rule." In other words he's black
only by means of a man made technicality. He then launches into a tedious
description of his family tree. Connerly proudly claims his Cajun, Irish
and Choctaw Indian ancestors. He pointedly states that his great
grandmother was an Irish woman and that his grandmother looked more Indian
than black. In the speech and in the book he praises only one black man:
His Uncle James. As the only black man who had any kind of positive
influence on young Wardell, (Connerly dropped the "ell" when he went away to
college), it's obvious that James must have been something really special.
Connerly mentioned his enduring friendship with former California
governor Pete Wilson in the speech and devotes a lot of time to it in the
book. Not once did he mention any black friends. The one childhood pal who
gets a mention in the book is a little white girl with freckles and red
hair. The black kids in his neighborhood are described as backwards and
tribalistic. Apparently not one black teacher or adult outside his family
made an impact on him.
He talks warmly about his white teachers, the elderly Jew who gave
him his first job and the kindly white bus driver who drove a little slower
each evening so young Wardell didn't have to run to catch his bus on the way
to work. His family moved to California from Louisiana when he was just a
young boy and apparently except for elderly or lower class whites no-one
appears to have mentioned his race to him at all!
The Civil Rights movement was just something that was happening down
South. He seems to have never listened to a Motown album or picked up a
copy of Ebony magazine. The few times he does bring up blacks adults who
weren't family members the tone is dismissive. His mother's funeral and
going to his grandmother's church on Sunday are described like primitive
rituals straight out of National Geographic. Somehow I don't think he's
ever had Hoppin' John on New Year's Eve or been to a Guardsmen, or Boule
party or attended a Step show. I suspect a plate of chitlins would send him
screaming into the night!
Connerly's adult life began when he said good-bye to his grandmother
and went off to college. There he met his future bride and despite her
parents initial opposition they were married in 1962. He met Pete Wilson
and got into politics. This relationship with Wilson was a boon to his
construction business, although Connerly denies it, and led to his
appointment as a University of California Regent. This is how he met Jerry
and Ellen Cook. The Cooks were college professors who wrote the Cook Report
which claimed that black students were being admitted to UC with lower SAT
scores than whites.
They were hardly objective scholars, however. They started looking
into black grades because they were angry that their son, James hadn't been
accepted to any of the California medical schools he had applied to. Young
James was accepted into Johns Hopkins, the best medical school in America
but Johns Hopkins is all the way in Baltimore and poor young James wanted to
attend school in California near his folks. Instead of telling the Cooks
that it was time to cut the apron strings to let their little boy grow up
Connerly was outraged. Black kids took James' place? How terrible! The
movement that led to Prop. 209 was born.
When Connerly told this story in his speech I noticed heads in the
audience bobbing in approval. When the speech and the question and answer
session were over he received a thunderous applause. I bought the book,
since that is what book signings are for and took it up to his table to be
signed. Having seen that my husband and I weren't dangerous he smiled
warmly at me and wrote a nice little note on the book's front page.
Later, as my husband and I stepped into the blessedly cool night we
both agreed that we understood why Connerly was so hated. He is a
revolutionary. His way of thinking is quite unlike anything we'd ever heard
from a black man. We both wished that we hadn't been the only blacks in the
room that night. Why? Because Ward Connerly should not be ignored. His
voice is powerful and he is both a comfort and touchstone to whites who
would turn back the clock on Black America.
He does not understand black people or sympathize with us in the
least and he seems to be banking on the day when we will all simply slip
into whiteness as he has done. At the end of the book he talks about the
birth of his granddaughter and exults because her tiny little fist next to
his brown skin was as "white as snow." I almost quit reading at that point
but kept on. On the final page of the book he asks bookstore owners and
librarians not to put his book in the African American section.
Ward Connerly's book left me feeling more sad than angry. I
wondered what the hell happened to young Wardell Connerly. How on earth did
he loose the unparalleled joy of loving black people and living life as a
black person? Strange fruit is what Jesse Jackson called him. Strange fruit
indeed.
_________ Kimberley Lindsay Wilson is a freelance writer living in
Alexandria. She is the author of Work It! The Black Woman's Guide to
Success at Work.
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I send my prayers out to that brother.
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