WARD CONNERLY (WC): You're quite welcome.

IV: Affirmative action began in 1965 with the Executive Order of President Lyndon B. Johnson. He stated that the United States needed to move beyond the passive non-discrimination laws that had already been enacted. Johnson also stated that companies needed to go further to guarantee that minorities and women were recruited in ways that improved their opportunities to be hired and move up in their jobs. Was President Johnson correct?

WC: I think President Johnson was correct in saying that the nation needed to address the fact that black people and women -- although I think it's a mistake to lump them all together, because women were out of the workplace for different reasons than black people -- were not being allowed to fully participate in all phases of American public life. President Johnson was correct that the country had to do more than simply say, "Thou shalt not discriminate." I don't know, but I don't think that President Johnson ever intended, and I know that Hubert Humphrey and others did not intend for affirmative action programs to evolve into a set of policies and practices that treated people differently on the basis of race. I think it's still appropriate for us to apply affirmative action in the sense that we're going to monitor, that we're going to aggressively promote job availabilities, advertise widely in every kind of newspaper or source of information that we can, and that we're going to aggressively ferret out discrimination. But I don't think that affirmative action ought to be a system of what we call "preferences". That term seems to be pejorative to some people, but the reality is that affirmative action is a euphemism for a lot of practices, some of which are good, some of which are very, very insidious.

IV: That's a good lead-in to my next question. Based on your activities spearheading ballot measures that overturned affirmative action in both Washington state and California (Proposition 209), Mr. Connerly, you seem to be of the opinion that somewhere along the way, affirmative action deviated from its original purpose. Is that true and, if so, what happened and when?

WC: You know, Mr. Byrd, I think that it happened really in about the mid-70s. We as a society got impatient with the rate of progress in getting black people into our universities and into the mainstream. Our universities began to experiment with affirmative action in ways that were constitutionally impermissible. That kind of came to a head in 1978, when Allan Bakke, a white engineering student, prevailed in a lawsuit against the University of California's quota system. At the time, sixteen seats out of a hundred were reserved for "underrepresented minorities" at the University of California-Davis School of Medicine. In the Bakke decision, the Supreme Court ruled that quotas are illegal; they're unconstitutional, because they operate on the premise that by bringing in an "underrepresented minority" an institution is bringing in someone that meets a certain profile, and people should not be stereotyped. One should not presume that a black person or a Latino brings any set of values or aspirations to the arena. The court did rule, however, that race could be used as "one of many factors" in the interest of achieving educational diversity. Although the Supreme Court was really using diversity in a broader context, universities said, "Ah-hah!" and they began to use race as the dominant factor. Instead of using race as an itty-bitty "plus" factor to distinguish between students of equal merit, universities drove a Mack truck through that opening and began to establish different standards for people on the basis of race. And thinking that they had somehow leveled the playing field, they totally ignored the crappy secondary school system that a lot of black and Latino kids were attending, because universities believed that the problem of secondary education had been solved by the university affirmative action programs. So, I would say that it all began around the mid-70s, and then it accelerated like topsy with the Bakke decision. And that Bakke decision has been used not only by higher education but by other government agencies as well to proclaim their commitment to diversity.

IV: I recently read where you've begun a campaign in Florida similar to the ones in California and Washington state. How is that progressing, and how do you respond to Florida Governor Jeb Bush, among others, calling you "divisive?"

WC: Well, it's progressing rather well, and my response to Governor Bush, who is -- I think -- trying to do the right thing, is that public policy by definition is divisive. I can't think of any issue, whether it's tort reform or school choice or abortion or anything that causes people to make a decision, that isn't by definition dividing people. I would suggest to the governor that it's not that this issue is going to divide people; it's how we handle that debate that is important. Every day my staff gives me a package of clippings that addresses issues of race around the country. And if you don't believe that race is already a divisive subject in every region of this nation, you're living on a different planet than I am. What I'm suggesting is, let's solve this problem. Let's discuss it, and let's get it out on the table and resolve it, and it can't be resolved by white people alone. Black people have to be prepared to come to the negotiating table and say, "We're willing to give up some things, one of which is affirmative action as a form of preferences. Not all affirmative action, though. Make it on the basis of class; make it on the basis of income, but not on the basis of race. We'll give it up. But what we want in return is for the American people to stop thinking that black people are somehow less than competent when it comes to education. Stop thinking that our skin color somehow makes us unworthy and somehow different, and that one has to pass judgment about us on the basis of our skin color."

IV: Affirmative action stigmatizes "blacks"?

WC: Exactly, exactly, and when I go to college campuses, I hear a lot of students say, "Well, I'd rather be here with the stigma than to not be here at all." That's a false choice, but the reality is that the stigma exists. It exists, and they know it exists. One black law student who had just beaten the hell out of me in public, came up to me after my lecture and said, "You know, you're right. Every day that I walk into class I have this feeling that people are wondering whether I'm there because I got in through affirmative action." She said, "So, I agree with you, but it seems to me that we need to do this more gradually. You're pushing it too fast." But she really agreed with me on the merits of my argument. You know, I can see this in their eyes almost, the self-doubt and the fact that they realize that other people are assuming that they were admitted solely because of affirmative action, when in actuality most of them have not benefitted from any preference.

IV: Your detractors present you as a puppet of conservative or even racist "whites." As a University of California System Regent, however, you voted in favor of providing domestic partner benefits to gay and lesbian UC employees. Your support for gay rights is almost never mentioned in the publicity about you. Could it be because knowledge of your position on this issue would contradict the "puppet" image your opponents seek to paint?

WC: Exactly. This is almost like a war out there, and you don't concede anything on the battle field to your opponent. The notion that I am either a right-wing zealot myself, which some people try to depict me as, or that I'm a pawn of right-wingers is the centerpiece of their argument, because you can't argue their position on the merits. You can't argue that black people and recent immigrants, who may be Latinos or Hispanics, should somehow get preferences in this nation. You can't argue that forcefully. So, as a result, they have to resort to attacking me personally, but anybody who knows me knows that I'm no pawn of anybody. I don't get paid as a Regent. So, if I'm doing this as a puppet for somebody, I'm one of the dumbest puppets in the world. At least I should get paid for it, you know.

IV: Your most vehement critics come from within the "black" political intelligentsia. They suggest that you and your organization are fronting for a right-wing agenda designed to rollback civil rights advances of minorities. How do you respond to that charge and to the accompanying name-calling -- as when they deride you as an Uncle Tom Negro who formerly was a beneficiary of affirmative action programs?

WC: Well, there are a lot of questions imbedded in that one question, but let me try to address most of them. First of all, the concept of civil rights has, I think, been misunderstood in our nation. You mention the words civil rights, and you automatically think of black people; you think of the 1960s. But the civil rights movement, in my opinion, was a point at which the nation said we are not going to use traits like color, and I think, by implication, other traits as well -- sexual orientation, gender -- to discriminate against people. We're not going to use these traits in Americans to deny people opportunities. We're not gonna do that. That's how I interpret civil rights. They are unalienable rights that attach to every human being in this nation. You can't sever them from the person. They're born with those rights, and the presumption that they are equal. Then the nation operates on that presumption as a nation that believes in God. We say our Creator gave us those rights. We're endowed with them. We then as a government, I think, are obliged to honor those rights and to treat everybody equally and to give them equal protection under the law. Whatever you do outside the law, that's your business to some extent, but the government is obliged to treat everybody equally. That's what civil rights, I thought, really meant. They are not just for black people, and I say as a black man that black people have to come to terms with that.

Now, to the question that I somehow benefited. I went to a community college, a two-year institution when I graduated from school, despite the fact that I was on the honor roll (the dean's list). I had a 3.9 or something like that, but I couldn't afford to go anyplace else. My mother had died. I was living with an aunt and an uncle and a grandmother alternately. After graduating from community college, I then went to a state college. I was student-body president there. After graduation, I went to work for the government in a civil service position. I was hired as a result of a civil service examination in which I came out on top. I then went into business in 1973, and you will not find me registered anyplace as a minority contractor. But somebody has made such a charge on the Internet, and once you get it on the Internet, you can't get it off. My detractors use that, but it's a red herring. It's a false issue. Moreover, ask the question: if this man has a private business, and he's somehow benefiting from preferences, why does he want to take them away? Why does he want to shoot himself in the foot by taking away something from which he benefits? The reality is that I do not try to characterize myself as a minority contractor. I do not disparage those who do, but for me, I think it's a bad business decision. If I register as a minority contractor, there are certain people who will deal with me on that basis while there's a shotgun pointed at them, however, once the shotgun is taken away, they will have no obligation to do business with me. So, I don't want to be regarded, and I've never wanted to be regarded as a minority contractor. I'm a business man. My race, whatever that is, is secondary to my being in business and trying to turn out a good product for my clients. Again, the whole argument of whether I've benefited is irrelevant. Let's assume that I have. Let's assume that I came to the conclusion that, "Gee, this is bad; this is bad for me." I have a right to say that, and one should not somehow try to characterize it as hypocrisy. But in reality, I don't benefit from these programs, and I never have.

IV: What exactly is your business?

WC: I have a management consulting business that manages trade associations. We deal with a lot of non-profit, non-governmental organizations that are involved, to some extent or another, in public policy. We manage their assets. We plan their conferences. We are their staff. We represent them at their board meetings. The trade association business is big business in any state capital, and it certainly is in the state of California and in Sacramento. That's what our business is.

IV: Let me preference this next question by stating that I'm of mixed-race myself, if you didn't already know that.

WC: I didn't know that.

IV: In a New York Times article from July 27, 1997 you stated that you are one-quarter "black," three-eighths Irish, one-quarter French and one-eighth Choctaw. Aren't you therefore, Mr. Connerly, a "black" or Negro only after an extremely liberal -- no pun intended -- application of the one-drop rule? Aren't you, in effect, of mixed-race or multiracial?

WC: Absolutely, and that's part of the reason why I'm fighting this stupid, I mean absolutely stupid race regime and this race mentality that we have in America. There are very few pure African-Americans, very few. On a recent trip to Louisiana where I gave a lecture at Tulane, I saw black people who were all shades of the rainbow. Black is a generic term; I'll accept that. It's a generic term just like white is.

IV: Is it easier for you to say that as opposed to delineating all of your background?

WC: Yes. We're lazy communicators; all of us are. So, if we need some shorthand to kind of describe somebody, even though they may be cream-colored or pink or whatever, it is acceptable I suppose to call them white. If you want to call fair-skinned people who are, for all intents and purposes white, if you want to call them black because they they somehow self-identify as black, go ahead. I don't care, but African-American is a term that I don't like. In fact, I hate that term, because it presumes my ethnic background or my national origin, and when you say that I'm African-American, especially when my African ancestry is less than all the rest of me, you're embracing that one-drop rule mentality. So, I fight the one-drop rule, because I am of mixed origin. My wife is white, and my grandkids are all of me, all of my wife. Their mother is half-Vietnamese. For us, these silly little boxes on these application forms have got to go. Implicit in all that I do and say is my personal agenda of getting rid of those friggin' boxes and getting the nation beyond the point at which you demand that I identify myself as a black man or an African-American. I won't argue the point right now, because I don't have enough time in my lifetime to to do so. But eye is constantly on the ball of getting rid of that mindset in America.

IV: If at the time you were born there had been a legally recognized mixed-race identity in America, is it conceivable that such a personal option for yourself could have effected your present efforts to eliminate considerations of race in school admissions, etc.?

WC: Wow. I'm not sure I can make the connection there. It wasn't the fact that I had no choice about my background that drove me to attack the system that we have now. It wasn't that alone. It was my view that, in this nation, we should never distinguish between the American people on the basis of traits like skin color and where your ancestors came from. That is morally wrong, and it is unconstitutional. As a fiduciary of the University of California, I was driven more from protecting the university from a lawsuit that was certainly in waiting. The general counsel had informed me, when I brought these things to his attention that many of our campuses were engaging in practices that might be considered unconstitutional." He sent a letter to some of the campuses saying, "disband these practices that give underrepresented minorities an automatic 300 bonus points if they check the box." So, I don't think that if I had the option, or if my parents had the option, to put down multiracial, that it would have affected how I voted on this. I do think, however, it certainly would have affected the course of American history, and I think it would affect the whole debate about race right now, if people had that option. If more black people, in quotes "black" people, stopped for just one moment and recognized the fact that they are part quote "white"...probably 60-70% are "white"...., then their attitudes about race would be affected. If more people did that, it would then be pretty hard to demonize those who share a background common to yours. But when you consider yourself a pure black, and you're a pure white, and you're a pure Latino or whatever it is, then it's pretty easy, because it's them against us. That's what generates the name-calling. I've sold-out.?! Well, sell-out means I've gone to the other side. Well, what's the other side?

IV: The majority side in your case.

WC: That's right. I think that this black-white mentality is one that black people more than anybody else are going to have to give up. One, it does not comport with reality.

IV: Let's shift gears away from affirmative action to what has become known as the multiracial movement. Your organization denounced the federal government's rejection of a multiracial category on the U.S. Census and other federal forms. Jennifer Nelson, executive director of ACRI said: "Americans are tired of being divided and categorized along racial and ethnic lines. A multiracial box would unify Americans and help heal racial tensions. We urge President Clinton to reject this task force's recommendations and support a multiracial box on the U.S. Census." That did not happen, and there will be no mixed-race or multiracial box next year.

My position all along has been that the government should either include some form of a multiracial identifier or scrap these stupid categories once and for all. Let's talk about compelling the United States government to eliminate racial and ethnic categories from all official forms. Could a legal case be made for the census -- with its emphasis on separate and mutually exclusive categories -- as a bastion of segregation, as an immoral classification system which defines "racial" mixture as illegitimate and that race-counting in itself breeds race-based resentment?

WC: Absolutely. I had a tough time signing off on the staff's recommendation on that question of the census. Part of the rationale in the recommendation was that if we have the multiple choice in effect, if we have a mixed-race category, so many people will check the mixed-race that it will render as obsolete all of the other separate categories that we have. I thought, well, I sort of agree with that, but on the other hand, the way government operates, and the way it moves like a freight train, it may take another five generations before we get around to really debating the stupidity of the classification system. So, we sort of decided that the policy decision that we would establish, the ground that we would stake out was to attack the whole classification system period. Go right to the heart of it, rather than trying to do this incrementally. I'm not sure we made the right decision. I'm still troubled by this. I don't know which is the right way to go. I think it reduces itself, to some extent, to tactics. I don't think that we can sell the idea that racial classifications are an odious system in America and end them cold turkey. There are too many vested interests in keeping the status quo, and I see those interests all the time in those who attack me. Emerge magazine, when it attacks me, is not coming after me on the basis of some moral principle. Hell, they sell magazines based on people identifying with their blackness. Most of these people who are attacking me have a vested interest. In Florida, some of the black politicians who attack me never talk about education; they talk about contracting. Why do they talk about contracting? Because they're in people's pockets. It's all on the public record. I'm not casting stones at anybody without having evidence. It's on the public record. For example, there is a legislator who invested $250 in an airport concession that was set aside for a minority contractor and then a year later he received a $134,000 dividend on his $250 investment, and another black legislator who received a $90,000 commission for getting another minority, a black man, a contract to sell bonds for a project in the state of Florida. These people aren't taking the position they do because they want to help poor black people. This is a form of welfare, in effect, for the middle class, and it's a disgrace the way that they exploit people.

IV: Does your organization have any plans to challenge the federal government's racial classification system?

WC: No. I don't think that the answer is to try to deal with it at the federal level, because even a very diluted Congressional Black Caucus can have far greater effect at the federal level -- because they're there all the time -- than you or I and all the forces of the planet can have in trying to change events at the federal level.

IV: Your emphasis, then, would be on the state level.

WC: Yes. I have had the staff draft language that we would try to get introduced in the California state legislature that would prohibit the government from even asking people about their identity. I don't think I can get that through the legislature. I know I can't get it through the legislature, but I want to go through the legislature and at least let them help me frame the debate. When the bill comes up for hearing, the NAACP, the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, and Chinese for Affirmative Action, will all show up, and they will argue why we need to be asking this stuff. The University of California will be there, and they'll be saying, "Well, we need to monitor our outreach efforts." Some of this is valid; some of it is not. So, I want to at least have the debate, and then after the bill is killed in committee, head right to the ballot. Put it on the ballot, and have the people of our state address it. I have a poll that shows that if this gets on the ballot, it passes by 65-35%.

IV: Really?

WC: Yeah. There's just a feeling among people that something is wrong about these boxes. I had a professor once who said that we all have a "knower." There's just certain things we know. You don't have to tell us; we just know it. Our knower tells us that there's something fundamentally flawed about a nation that prides itself on equality and wanting to be color-blind, yet asking people to identify what their race is.

IV: So, you're anticipating defeat in the legislature, but you feel the value of that debate will allow you to take the issue to the people in the form of a ballot initiative, which you believe will pass by a 2-1 margin.

WC: That's right. That has been the way of California for the last twenty years. You can't get things through the legislature, because the legislature is far more liberal, Democrat -- and I don't have any problem with it being Democrat -- but you just can't get a serious discussion about public policy questions.

IV: Why not go to the ballot initiative directly?

WC: I think that it's useful, it's very useful to kinda smoke them out initially. You learn a lot when you go to the legislature; you find out who your opponents are going to be. It's like a huge focus group. If you've run a campaign before, you know the value of having a focus group. Going to the legislature and spending three or four months in hearings is like a huge focus group that allows you to test your arguments and to test theirs and to see where you need to structure your campaign. Plus, I do believe that the initiative process ought to be reserved as a last resort. People should grab their pitchforks and charge the hill after they've exhausted all the other remedies.

IV: If successful in California, might you take this to other states?

WC: Yes. You know I believe that had we started out discussing the whole issue of racial classifications and why the nation needs to get away from that, that might have solved the whole debate about affirmative action preferences in the process. Because if you can't ask people about their classification, you can't begin to confer benefits on that basis. I think there's more of a readiness to do away with the classifications that transcends race. On the issue of affirmative action, black people can be seduced by the black establishment. They say, "Hey, this is for you. He wants to take this away from you" -- even though 90% of black people don't have a clue of what affirmative action is and will never benefit from it.

IV: They just know they should be in favor of it.

WC: They just know they should be in favor of it. It's one of those truths that we hold to be self-evident.

IV: Because the Jesse Jacksons tell them.

WC: Yeah. Let me give you an example of that principle. We just had a poll conducted in Florida by Zogby International, and the language that we read to them was identical to 209 and initiative 200 in Washington. "The state shall not discriminate against or grant preferential treatment to any individual or group upon the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education and public contracting." The question was: would you vote in favor of or oppose that language? 83% of Floridians said "aye." I'll vote in favor of that. About 84% of whites said yes. 78% of black people said yes. So, if you just use language with no games being played, and you ask black people whether they would be in favor of that language, there's a very small difference between black and white on that issue. Now, I promise you, however, that at the end of a six-month campaign, the gap between black and white on that language that I have read would probably be 40 points.

IV: That's due to what?

WC: That's due to the Jesse Jacksons, the Maxine Waters, the black legislators there saying, "This guy wants to take away your affirmative action." See, we've gone now from the principle of treating people differently, now they then go to the code words. "He wants to take away affirmative action from you."

IV: So, a long term strategy on this racial classification issue might be to use the ballot initiative to remove these categories in a majority of states or in enough states that represent a majority of the country's population. That might then compel the feds to eliminate these boxes on that level.

WC: Yes. Whether people want to admit it or not, the reason we're having this big debate throughout the nation and why the Supreme Court will eventually deal with issue even if the federal government will not, is because of California -- the decision that the Regents made, and Proposition 209 followed by Initiative 200 in Washington state. We're signaling the fact that the American people have changed their attitudes about treating people differently under the guise of somehow leveling the playing field -- under the guise that affirmative action is a no-cost program, that nobody pays a price for it, there is no tax here. I don't mean tax in the sense of dollar tax. I mean prices that we all pay, social cost, the marginalization that accompanies it. So, by going to the ballot in California, you legitimize the debate. Right now, as strange as it seems, if you and I went to a lecture and we debated Julian Bond or somebody, and we argued that these racial classifications ought to go, we'd be the ones on the fringe. Even though we're representing a point of view that is held by the overwhelming majority of the American people, overwhelming. We would be on the fringe. We're the ones that are being divisive. We're the ones who are upsetting the apple-cart.

IV: We would be painted as those who are willing to strip "black" Americans of "protection," leaving them defenseless against racism.

WC: That's right, but the boxes, in fact, make us all the more conscious of race. The debate that's ongoing in America right now is between two different principles. One, as John F. Kennedy said on June 11, 1963, "Race has no place in American life or law." The other philosophy, which came out of the Bakke decision, says, "Race matters -- you have to use race to get beyond race."

IV: That perpetuates race, though.

WC: That perpetuates race. Once you start using it, you don't get beyond it. You start building an infrastructure around it. You begin to get people who have a vested interest in its maintenance. That applies to any subject. If you're talking about real estate, and you get a tax break for owning your own home, the minute you want to take that away, I guarantee you there will be a constituency there saying, "Don't take this away." If it's farm subsidies, a constituency is built around it. If it is race benefits or gender benefits, a constituency is built around it. Once you want to take it away, they are going to fight you tooth and nail. The difference is that with farm subsidies, real estate, trial lawyer benefits and other kinds of things, they can't invoke the morality of it, the leveling of the playing field and all those kinds of arguments. When you start talking about race, you're able to play on people's guilt, and you're able to easily say, "You're in this group, and he wants to take away from you," even though you may never benefit from what is being defended.

IV: Mr. Connerly, I'm going to wrap this up. Is there something else you want to add?

WC: No. It's a very good interview. I'm glad you went into this subject that is more important to me than all the others, frankly. I just tactically decided that we have to do it in a different way, but in every speech I give, I bring up this subject, because that's the end game for me. Yesterday I gave the keynote address to the Junior Statesmen of America, about a thousand high school kids. Man, that was an experience. But I brought this up about getting rid of the silly little boxes, and one Latino stood up and said, "Why do you want to strip me of my identity? I'm proud of my identity." I said that I wasn't trying to strip her of her identity, but that I don't want the government taking it into account. It has nothing to do with whether she can be proud of her identity or not. Then she lapsed into the diversity argument, and how "my culture is important". I said, "You can do whatever you want in your private life, but you don't deserve any extra points for your ethnic background when you apply for college.

IV: That's brings up one last question. This notion of a "Latino" or "Hispanic" race is fairly absurd. It's an ethnic grouping, but quite a few people interpret it as the "brown race" standing apart from the "white" and "black" races. "Latinos" are by definition a mixed-race people. Correct?

WC: That's right.

IV: Interestingly, outside of the NAACP, the organization most virulently opposed to a multiracial category was the National Council of La Raza, and though many folk have come to view "Hispanics" and "Latinos" as some sort of separate race, they are all of mixed heritage themselves.

WC: That's exactly right. Some Latinos have Indian ancestry. Some are of European and African mixtures. I've learned this in the Florida situation. In California, most of our Latinos are from Mexico, and we have, at the University of California, two classifications that we use. One is Latino, and the other is Chicano. The Chicano is largely Mexican, and you don't want to call a Latino a Chicano in California. They get mad. Now you go to Florida, and the Floridians don't really like the term Latino. They prefer Hispanic. But within that Hispanic category, there are Cubans, there are people from Mexico, there are some that are five shades darker than I am, there are some that have brown hair and blue eyes, you know. To try to decide who among them should somehow be getting some affirmative action is insane. It's just insane, but yet if they all want to check the Hispanic classification, most government agencies will confer a benefit upon them.

IV: Mr. Connerly, how can Interracial Voice readers correspond with you if they desire?

WC: The best way probably, since I try not to get on this Internet stuff, is to communicate to me through the ACRI website (www.acri.org/join/index.html). You may leave a message in the comments section, and my staff will pass it along to me. Or people can write to me at:

Ward Connerly
P.O. Box 188350
Sacramento, CA 95818

IV: Mr. Connerly, thank you for your time.

WC: Thank you, Charles.

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