Obama Is No 'Post-Racial' Candidate

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Obama Is No 'Post-Racial' Candidate

By WARD CONNERLY

June 13, 2008; Page A15

With all my heart – and for the betterment of my country – I desperately wanted to believe that Sen. Barack Obama was not one of the same tired voices who peddle arguments about "institutional racism."

I have heard him say that America is not about "black and white." I was inspired when his supporters chanted at his rally on the night of his victory in South Carolina that "race doesn't matter." I thought his March 18 speech about race had the potential to become a defining moment in our endless struggle to confront and conquer this issue. I was encouraged by his perceptive acknowledgment that affirmative action breeds resentment and hostility. As millions of whites cast their votes for him in predominantly white states, I held out hope that, perhaps, he truly was a transformative leader.

But a June 10 article in USA Today by DeWayne Wickham dashed my hopes for Mr. Obama.

Mr. Wickham, who had interviewed the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, wrote that "Obama believes America can keep its promise to women and blacks without dashing the hopes of working-class whites. He doesn't think opportunity guarantees made to one group must come at the expense of another." Then he went on to quote Obama campaign spokeswoman Candice Toliver, who said that "Senator Obama believes in a country in which opportunity is available to all Americans, regardless of race, gender or economic status. That's why he opposes these ballot initiatives, which would roll back opportunity for millions of Americans and cripple efforts to break down historic barriers to the progress of qualified women and minorities."

Translation: Mr. Obama supports race preferences.

As many readers will know, I am intimately involved in the effort to enact race-neutral ballot initiatives around the country (right now in Arizona, Colorado and Nebraska). I find it difficult to understand how the senator can "strongly oppose" any initiative that does precisely what he professes to believe and is consistent with the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

This is the language of the initiatives I am now sponsoring: "The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin, in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting."

The rationale for using race preferences to "eliminate historic barriers," upon which Mr. Obama relies as his primary justification, has been rejected consistently by the Supreme Court since the Bakke decision in 1978. Only the pursuit of "diversity" by higher education meets the strict constitutional test for race preferences. As a lawyer, I am sure that Mr. Obama must know this.

He must also know that blacks and whites are not the only racial groups in America. Every year there are more than 48,000 applicants for one of the 4,500 seats at the University of California campus at Berkeley. Before the passage of the initiative in that state to outlaw race preferences, thousands of Asian students were denied admission so that a greater number of "underrepresented minorities" could be admitted.

Similar circumstances exist across the nation, because college admissions, public jobs and government contracts are the ultimate "zero-sum" game, and race and gender should not be the determining factors in picking winners and losers. It simply stretches credulity to argue that an "opportunity" given to one, on the basis of race, is not discrimination against another for the same reason.

The issue that troubled many Americans about the widely publicized sermons of Rev. Jeremiah Wright was his view that America is an "institutionally racist" society. This view lies at the heart of the defense advocates of race preferences make for "affirmative action." It is also at the core of Black Liberation Theology.

By supporting race preferences, Mr. Obama is unmistakably attaching himself to despicable ideas like Rev. Wright's. And, if he believes in those precepts, how does he reconcile his impressive political success and that of Mrs. Clinton with this perspective? Thirty-six million Americans didn't vote for the two of them because the majority of the American people are racist and sexist.

If Mr. Obama wants to be the candidate of "change," why doesn't he change the idiotic racial classification system that burdens millions of Americans? Why doesn't he call attention to the barbaric "one-drop" (of hereditary blood) rule that continues to haunt our nation, and which drives him to identify with the "black community" at the expense of his white ancestry? If he wants to unite the American people, how does he propose to do that by asking some Americans to accept preferential treatment for others and discrimination against themselves?

How does Mr. Obama expect America to compete with China and India when we abandon the principle of individual merit and elevate skin color and sex above performance?

Soothing rhetoric about uniting our nation against a backdrop of American flags isn't sufficient to accomplish that objective. Specific policies like affirmative action – and where candidates stand on them – are where the rubber meets the road.

If either Barack Obama or John McCain want to be a truly "post-racial president," then it is essential that they support efforts to place our nation on a path to guarantee equal treatment under the law for all Americans. That means preferential treatment for none on the basis of their race, ethnic background, skin color or sex.

Mr. Connerly is chairman of the American Civil Rights Coalition and author of "Creating Equal" (Encounter, 2000).

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