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Can Ward Connerly Be Stopped?
By Jennifer Millman
July 17, 2007
The N-word wasn't the only thing the Michigan chapter of the NAACP buried last week. Recently re-elected Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a longtime NAACP member and staunch supporter of affirmative action, also had a few words for Ward Connerly, the California businessman who successfully led the campaign to end affirmative action in public education, employment and contracting in her state last fall and helped pass similar voter-approved initiatives in California and Washington state.
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"I would like to see us bury the efforts of Ward Connerly," Granholm told the crowd, according to the Detroit News.
Despite the symbolic gesture and the cheering crowd, it's clear it'll take more than a eulogy to stop Connerly. Currently he is working to get anti-affirmative-action proposals on the ballots in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma on Nov. 4, 2008.
In response to Granholm's comment, Connerly said that she is "out of touch with reality," reports the Detroit News. "I don't know how much louder the citizens of Michigan can send a message to Gov. Granholm," he said, referring to Michigan voters' approval of his anti-affirmative-action ballot by a 16 percentage point margin--58 percent to 42 percent--in November.
That vote, however, was a product of the deceptive message in which Connerly framed his so-called "Michigan Civil Rights Initiative" campaign, a message that, at least initially, had very little to do with affirmative action.
It's All in the Message
Let's not forget that controversy over ballot language was the premise of a state court battle that kept the proposal off the ballot in November 2004. The initial ballot language didn't even mention the word "affirmative action," which led the Board of Canvassers to re-write it before posing it to voters.
A recent study from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press shows increasing support nationwide for policy designed to improve racial equity, including affirmative action. In 1995, 58 percent of Americans favored affirmative-action programs, compared with 70 percent in 2007. Gains are evident across party and demographic lines; 65 percent of whites, for example, now favor such policy, up from 53 percent.
Pew didn't break down results by state, but it's unlikely that regional attitudinal differences alone accounted for Connerly's successful campaign in Michigan. Calling the proposal a "civil-rights initiative" that would advance equal opportunity appealed to many people who didn't necessarily understand the implications of it.
This "colorblind" message makes logical sense to the average white American, but its premise simply isn't rooted in reality. And new research shows that continuing to advocate such an approach could have devastating repercussions for racial equity.
Connerly's mentality may have been more aligned with social-psychology research of the 1980s and 1990s, which concluded that drawing attention to race would only exacerbate stereotypes and enhance prejudice. Times have changed.
"Recent advances within the fields of social psychology and sociology have demonstrated that the colorblind approach to race may be impractical, at best, and at worst harmful to the question for racial equity and interracial good will," according to "The Dangers of Not Speaking About Race," a presentation by Philip Mazzocco at the Kirwan Institute for Race & Ethnicity at Ohio State University.
New research shows that racial classification happens automatically, which means that colorblind approaches are ineffective. "Diverting attention away from race, it seems, is simply not possible," writes Mazzocco. "Efforts to minimize attention to race do not consistently reduce prejudice or discrimination."
Color-conscious programs that consider race as one factor along with socioeconomics or geography, for example, are a viable alternative. "Color-conscious approaches show promise in fostering an appreciation of another group's positive societal contributions, as well as structural constraints and advantages," writes Mazzocco. "Both of these factors should encourage support for programs such as affirmative action and may also be instrumental in the battle to reduce prejudice, discrimination and inter-group conflict."
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