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For Connerly, the President's speech couldn't have been better timed. Connerly is on the cusp of being a national figure. Californians speculate about his political ambitions (he claims to have none), and the Wall Street Journal calls him one of the G.O.P.'s "two most prominent black conservatives." (Oklahoma Representative J.C. Watts is the other.) He's learning how hard it is to take an issue nationwide. The civil rights leaders, newspaper columnists and editorial cartoonists who scorned him last year--lumping him together with former Klansman David Duke, calling him an "Uncle Tom," a "lawn jockey," a "front man for the white right"--badly underestimated the man. Even some detractors admit that Proposition 209, which the state Republicans backed and Californians voted for last November 54% to 46%, would not have won without him.
While the initiative weathers a court challenge, Connerly has been traveling the country making powerful speeches and accepting awards from conservatives who hail him as a hero fighting for his vision of a color-blind society, a black man whose rags-to-riches story suggests that preferences aren't necessary for black achievement. He has been lobbying Newt Gingrich and other G.O.P. leaders to back an antipreference bill in Congress (maybe next year, says Gingrich) and helping groups who are organizing similar initiatives in six other states. But only one of those groups, an effort in Houston, has begun the arduous task of gathering qualifying signatures. To succeed, such groups need big money and plenty of troops; Connerly hopes Clinton's speech will attract both. The larger question, however, is whether Connerly's side can prevail in the national debate as America, which has been rolling back race- and gender-based affirmative action for years, decides whether it really wants to end all such programs--and what it will mean for the country if it does.
Today about 60% of white Americans oppose government efforts to help minorities; the same percentage of blacks favor them. But the public's attitude varies depending on how the survey questions are crafted. While a poll put out by Connerly last week found overwhelming support for "federal legislation prohibiting government discrimination and preferential treatment," a Gallup survey released the same week found that only 37% of whites and 12% of blacks favor a "decrease in affirmative action." In a California exit poll last year, 27% of those who voted for Proposition 209 said they supported affirmative action--even though they had just cast a ballot to eliminate it.
At the debate's core is the question of fairness: Is affirmative action state-sponsored discrimination or a still necessary step toward equality? The answer depends on one's experience of discrimination. Those who feel racism's sting and recall the country's systematic denial of black rights believe it's too soon to abandon the remedy. To remove all race- and gender-based affirmative action, says California assembly member Kevin Murray, chairman of the state's legislative black caucus, "is to tacitly authorize a system of preferences that benefits white males." This view is not confined to the left. "'Color-blind' is a cute word," says Representative Watts, who supports affirmative action, "but it has no meaning now. When you look at the number of blacks in FORTUNE 500 management, you know we have some work to do before we can even say we're close."