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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Connerly's basic argument -- that race should make no difference in public policy -- is seductive in its simplicity, and has a fundamental appeal to voters weary of the state's obsessive focus on racial categories. That obsession, his supporters say, amounts to a type of "racial profiling." That's just one of many novel rhetorical twists "racial privacy" proponents savor: lumping civil rights advocates in with their foes, in this case those who use racial stereotypes to justify disproportionate police investigations of minorities.
San Francisco author Richard Rodriguez praises Connerly for identifying a cultural trend that's beyond politics: California's erosion of racial boundaries and its celebration of racial blending. "I salute Connerly's shrewdness in catching a moment larger than the political. Clearly the cultural moment we are entering is civilization at play, in which color is completely open and no longer fated," said Rodriguez, outlining the central argument of his new book, "Brown -- The Last Discovery of America."
Rodriguez wouldn't say he supports the initiative, but his take on racial categories echoes Connerly's: "I am in a rage about these classifications that children are being forced to submit to. There are five major categories when so many children tell me they belong to more than one."
That argument, opponents realize, is hard to dispute.
"There's a rhetorical advantage they get by saying 'Let's be colorblind,'" concedes Troy Duster, a sociologist at New York University who still directs the American Cultures Center at UC-Berkeley, where he taught for many years. "It's very hard to say, 'Yes, we do want to keep race front and center' without making it sound like you want to go back to some retrograde notion that race is or should be the way people are selected," said Duster, who also went to battle with Connerly over affirmative action back in 1995.
"You don't want to rescue an 18th century conception of race, based upon a false notion of biological differences," Duster continues. "On the other hand, the effects of two centuries of racial stratification remain. To suddenly act as if that was not an issue is a transparent fiction."
Duster was surprised to learn that his Berkeley colleague and frequent ideological foe, linguist John McWhorter, agrees with him on this point. A vocal critic of affirmative action and a Connerly loyalist, McWhorter he says he can't join Connerly this time around.
While Duster's work often spotlights racial inequality, McWhorter likes to use racial statistics to illustrate how far black people have come toward equality. Either way, the statistics are useful, he says.
"One way of approaching social change is the "as if" way -- to pretend that there are not different races and that the races are not separated by vast social differences," said McWhorter. "The other way of fostering change is to work with the grimy reality. Yes, race is a fiction. Ultimately we want to be Americans. But to get there, to get beyond race, we have to deal with it," said McWhorter.
While Connerly's stated goal is to get beyond racial divisions, it can also be said that he likes a good fight. A black Sacramento businessman, he launched what seemed like a quixotic battle against racial preferences at the University of California, and in 1995, a divided Board of Regents voted to dismantle most of the system' s race-based policies.
Throughout that debate and the subsequent 209 campaign, which he chaired, Connerly clashed with university administrators and professors. He fired vitriolic memos at the likes of Angela Davis, the '60s radical-turned-UC-Santa Cruz professor, for using her UC post to fight 209. And he suggested reforms -- like anonymous admissions applications -- that went nowhere. His perceived audacity made him Public Enemy No. 1 to many on the left and within the black establishment. He endured numerous personal attacks, including a public spat with state Sen. Diane Watson over his longtime marriage to a white woman. But while his rhetoric has grown a tad less confrontational than in his early UC years, Connerly's views haven't changed much.
In many ways, the question of racial check boxes goes right to the heart of what irks Connerly, who considers himself black but shuns the African-American label. Connerly's ancestors include slaves of African descent, French Canadians, Irish-Americans, and Choctaw Indians. True to his personal background, Connerly seems bent on defying categorization -- as he did in opposing affirmative action.
And for as long as he has spoken out against affirmative action, he has railed against the "silly little boxes." Five years ago, for example, in a letter to President Clinton, he wrote, "Most Americans have a strong abhorrence to the counting-by-race phenomenon which currently exists. Most of us resent checking the silly little boxes which classify us."
