By Daryl C. Hannah - Mar 19, 2009
Keywords: anti-affirmative action, affirmative action, Ward Connerly, racist, bigot, California, Proposition 209, Proposition, discrimination
Ward Connerly, the California businessman who launched successful anti-affirmative-action campaigns in nearly 10 states, was unsuccessful in his latest attempt to thwart a Berkeley, Calif., student-assignment plan to promote diversity in its schools.
The California Appellate Court ruled that Berkeley's new plan to weigh demographics of neighborhoods where students live, parental education levels, family income and race to further diversify its schools does not violate Proposition 209--the Connerly-authored constitutional provision that makes it illegal to grant privilege or preference based on race.
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"The constitutional provision prohibits unequal treatment of particular person and groups of persons; it does not prohibit the collection and consideration of community-wide demographic factors," said Justice Patricia Sepulveda, writing for the majority in the California Court of Appeals.
The American Civil Rights Foundation, led by Connerly, argued that Berkeley's plans to assign students to districts and to allocate seats in certain programs at Berkeley High School were racial discrimination and violated Proposition 209.
"Proposition 209 bans discrimination and preferential treatment--period. Affirmative-action programs that don't discriminate or grant preferential treatment will be unchanged," wrote Sepulveda.
"This is an important victory for those who understand the importance of a diverse learning environment and believe that opportunity should be equally afforded to all," said John Payton, NAACP Legal and Educational Defense Fund president and director-counsel.
The students' families were represented by the NAACP Legal and Educational Defense Fund, along with the ACLU of Northern California, the ACLU of Southern California and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights.
Readers' Comments
Why indeed! One reason could be that after years of peddling his mythological notion that America is some sort of racially neutral Utopia, people are finally finished with Ward Connerly.
.As a 61 year old Black man I have to admit to a certain bias about Connerly. I have tended to lump him into a bucket that includes the likes of Clarence Thomas, Alan Keyes and Thomas Sowell, i.e. those whose respective notoriety appears to come more from their appeal to White conservatives than to any other ethno-political demographic, particularly their own.
While I realize that African Americans are not a monolithic group - politically or philosophically -- to me these men seem to, and continue to, reside in that niche of Blacks who seek White approval by espousing views that validate the views of those who: 1) believe that racism in America is a thing of the past, thus 2) ANY racial consideration, albeit to address past discrimination, is tantamount to racism, ergo 3) any Black who disagrees with that world view is simply a mindless corrupt dupe of the Liberal political establishment.
I have known people like them … seemingly wounded by their inability to achieve recognition in their own community, they position themselves as de facto spokespersons of the minority community who speak primarily to the majority community.
In the case of Connerly and Clarence Thomas, the information publicly available about their relationships and formative years provides significant grist for anyone's armchair attempts at psychological profiling.