Unraveling Affirmative Action

Ward Connerly is betting that affirmative action can become a pivotal election-year issue. He’s been pushing ballot measures aimed at banning affirmative action programs in Arizona and a handful of other states. It’s not clear whether voters will actually see these initiatives on their November ballots, in fact Connerly’s efforts in Oklahoma have crumbled and the Colorado initiative is facing legal hurdles. Today petition gatherers in Arizona and Nebraska are expected to submit signatures, which would qualify an initiative for the ballot.

There’s big money behind efforts to eliminate affirmative action. Connerly draws a salary of more than $300,000 from his non-profit group (The American Civil Rights Institute) and another $400,000 in anti-affirmative action speaking fees from his corporation. His corporation helps contractors, mostly in the housing industry, win lucrative government contracts. Those corporations in turn often make up an important donor constituency for anti-affirmative action ballot initiatives that serve to decrease competition.

Connerly’s money machine is key to his success, but equally powerful are his messaging strategies. For more than ten years Connerly has been trying to wrestle the civil rights brand from its traditional civil rights framework. His ballot initiative is steeped in anti-discrimination rhetoric – the twist is the solution, which tears down programs aimed at remedying historical discrimination. At its core his message is that only a government that is racially blind can promote a society that is racially equal. He even has some critique of the Supreme Court desegregation case Brown v Board of Education, arguing that it’s not a compelling government interest to ensure that white and black children sit next to each other. In Connerly’s message framework, it is affirmative action itself that is discriminatory.

His ballot initiatives attract scores of voters who are fooled by its civil rights framing. But that’s not the entire challenge. His campaign rhetoric hits at a vulnerable spot even among ardent civil rights supporters. His rhetoric asks, how can we both be committed to equality and in favor of racial preferences? How can we fix a system that unfairly favors Caucasians by forcing that system to unfairly favor non-Caucasians?

Connerly’s messaging strategy is to simplify a very complex issue (racial discrimination) into bite-size parts, and then to make those bite size parts universal. In doing so he is able to mask the very elements of racial discrimination that argue in favor of affirmative action. Pointing to the success of Barack Obama and Condoleeza Rice as proof that black Americans no longer face racial barriers is akin to pointing to Donald Trump’s real estate success and arguing that the housing crisis is fake. Yet Connerly’s arguments are persuasive to many.

For many, our greatest hopes are that the rise of leaders like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton signal the demise of institutionalized racism and sexism. Connerly not only feeds those hopes he amplifies private fears. Will affirmative action deny me opportunity if I am not in a protected class? Will it undermine my accomplishments if I am perceived to be a beneficiary of affirmative action? Do some affirmative action recipients get more benefits than others?

Supporters of affirmative action need messages that not only react to Connerly’s amendments, they need messages that are heartfelt for their own base. Voters need the amendment rhetoric to be unmasked, and they need their own convictions to be affirmed. What gets eliminated from the Connerly framework is the concept of social justice. Separating “equality” from “social justice” means that Connerly can message in absolutes – for example, a color-blind society means we won’t consider race or ethnicity for any reason. The reality is that affirmative action supporters routinely use a social justice framework to consider issues of equality. We know that racism, sexism, and other prejudices seep into the framework of institutions like schools and corporations and courtrooms. And so civil rights messengers need to reclaim the social justice framework within which affirmative action programs make sense.

Connerly’s first major anti-affirmative action victories occurred in California in 1996, where his efforts successfully passed a state ballot initiative. Leading up to that victory President Bill Clinton and Senator Bob Dole were vying for the Presidency and affirmative action was being used to motivate the Republican base. I was in California running grassroots opposition to the initiative, where I had the opportunity to meet with George Stephanopoulos and other senior White House staff and democratic party leaders. The first polls on the matter were a landslide for the Republican efforts – almost 3/4 of the California electorate agreed with the Connerly amendment. The democrats weren’t enthusiastic about the need to divert resources into an uphill battle in the midst of a difficult Presidential campaign. Clinton’s message became: “mend it don’t end it”, a difficult rallying cry for demoralized civil rights supporters.

Despite the odds public opinion among California voters moved to within 5 points of victory for affirmative action supporters. Expert poll watchers lamented that, given the trend, another two weeks of campaigning could have stopped the initiative. Without the massive California victory it’s hard to know if Connerly could have built his anti-affirmative action empire, which has led to the doorsteps of Nebraskans, Arizonans, and dozens of other states.

This time around the nation is gripped by a very different Presidential race. The fiery rhetoric of equality and social justice that has emerged from the Obama and Clinton campaigns creates a different landscape for a debate about affirmative action. If states like Arizona really do face Connerly initiatives, a new approach to messaging could signal a different result for affirmative action supporters.