Dartblog

Ward Connerly, the man who has led successful movements against racial preferences in California and Michigan, opines here on the state of civil rights and affirmative action today. John McCain, Connerly notes, may have flip- flopped on whether ballot initiatives are the appropriate way to end racial preferencing, but he has always opposed these preferences. See my previous post on the issue here. Barack Obama, on the other hand, knows that affirmative action breeds resentment, supports class- based preferences, and sees particular hardships for “communities of color” that must be remedied by preferencing, all at the same time.

…Over the past ten years, no American president, Congress, legislature, or governor has acted to eliminate preferences — in other words, to enforce the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which commands the government to treat us all “without regard to race, color, national origin or sex.”

…In response, I have led the national effort to enforce the act through ballot initiatives in states that allow them. I find it interesting that the only people who consider such initiatives “divisive” are the ones who oppose them, such as Sen.Obama. Such people never seem to find preferences themselves “divisive.” Apparently, as long as those who are harmed by such policies — and those who believe preferences are fundamentally wrong — keep their mouths shut, sweet harmony will ring throughout the land.

Also, it seems that Obama is divided against himself on the issue. In his famed “race speech,” when he was trying to appeal to white Democrats to get the issue of Jeremiah Wright off his back, he acknowledged that affirmative action engenders resentment.

…[He fails to say that] it is not only “communities of color” that experience hardships and difficulties. Nor does he say how, as president, he can achieve his stated goal of uniting the American people while asking those not “of color” to look the other way when discriminated against.

…Until we reach the point that we are living out what Martin Luther King Jr. often called the “true meaning of our creed” that all men (and women) are created equal, how we deal with the issue of race will be a work in progress.