I’m pleased to announce the kickoff of the “Super Tuesday of Equality” campaign.
Ward Connerly, Chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, is the man behind the anti-race preferences in government momentum. Campaigns kicked off this week in Colorado, Missouri, and Arizona.
The campaigns are a push to place initiatives on the November 4, 2008, ballot against skin color preferences. Connerly and company have already encouraged three states to pay more than lip service to equality and ban government-mandated race and sex preferences in government hiring and admissions.
Californians passed Proposition 209 by 54 percent in 1996, and the state of Washington passed I-200 with 58.3 percent of the vote in 1998. The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, which appeared on the November 7, 2006, ballot as Proposal 2 after facing challenges by several groups, passed with 58 percent of the vote. (Also see An Affirmative Action Lesson for Mary Sue Coleman)
Michigan voters have spoken, but groups continue to challenge the will of the people and fight for skin color preferences for a certain race.
Linda Chavez, Colorado native and chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity, said, “Racial preferences have not only harmed better qualified white and Asian students who have been passed over for admission, but the black and Hispanic students who are the intended beneficiaries. I have seen firsthand the unintended consequences at the University of Colorado (Boulder), where I taught in the university’s first affirmative action program…students who struggled to complete coursework for which they were ill-prepared, embittered in the process, many of them dropping out. No one benefits when students are held to different standards based on the color of their skin. Nor can preferential admissions based on race make up for the often unequal educational opportunities that disadvantaged students encounter in public schools throughout the nation.”
The proposed language for the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), subject to change: “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 education or public contracting.”
Missouri: “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 education or public contracting.”
Valery Pech Orr, executive director of CCRI, asked, “Are we really all equal, as we claim, or are we to be judged primarily by our gender and skin color? My family has been in Colorado for generations - my great grandparents homesteaded here in 1883. We in this state are individualists, racial and gender preferences run counter to our most basic values, and we expect that will be made abundantly clear on November 4, 2008.”
Orr was a co-plaintiff in Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena (1995). Adarand sued the government for its use of race to award contracts, citing a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. An appeals court affirmed the lower court’s summary judgment for the plaintiffs and held that racial discrimination claims should be reviewed under immediate scrutiny rather than the more appropriate standard (in my opinion) of strict scrutiny. The Supreme Court disagreed, holding that racial classifications imposed (mandated) by all levels of government must be reviewed under the strict scrutiny standard.
Under strict scrutiny, it’s almost impossible to justify racial classifications. In other words, the standard is designed to nullify any law that treats people differently based on race. While this concept is easier to understand in the context of Jim Crow and southern resistance to integration, Americans have lost sight of just how odious government-mandated racial classifications truly are, especially black Americans, some of whom unabashedly support discrimination as long as blacks benefit. History has a nasty way of repeating itself, so be careful what you wish for.
It’s shameful that we’re still battling against racial discrimination by the government in 2007, isn’t it? 
Says Ward Connerly (emphasis added), “Getting our nation to the point of applying a single standard to all Americans is one of the most crucial issues of our time. If events of the past couple of weeks have taught us anything at all, it is that race will continue to divide our nation as long as we insist on treating people differently. Both Don Imus, in his despicable comments about the young women of the Rutgers basketball team, and those who rushed to judgment in the Duke lacrosse case made the same mistake: they looked at individuals and saw only skin color. We have to get past that kind of thinking - and we must start by getting our government out of the business of privileging some Americans for the color of their skin and penalizing others. By now it should be clear that that leads only to bitterness and discord.”
Connerly is the author of Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences. See the book review.
Update: Blogger John Rosenberg at Discriminations has more on Super Tuesday for Equality.
I just received word that Oklahoma is on the equality bandwagon, too. State representative Randy Terrill said, “We believe the people of Oklahoma are fair and believe in equal treatment under the law. Ward Connerly and his organizations have done excellent work exposing policies that divide us and now we are delighted to have his support in pursuing the Oklahoma Civil Rights Initiative.”
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