Creating Equal, My Fight Against Race Preferences

Ward Connerly first burst onto the American scene 1995 as the University of California Regent who had forced the largest public university in the country to become color-blind in its admissions policies. Connerly led the 1996 campaign to pass California's Proposition 209. In 1998, he spearheaded a similar successful anti-discrimination measure in Washington. Creating Equal chronicles Connerly's unique friendship with California governor Pete Wilson, as well as his encounters with figures like Bill Clinton and Al Gore, mogul Rupert Murdoch, Gen. Colin Powell, and Jesse Jackson. But above all, this book tells about how one man's willingness to break ranks created a movement whose end is not yet in sight.

The University of California regent who got that institution to dump affirmative action and then spearheaded successful California and Washington ballot initiatives overturning those states' affirmative action policies explains himself very well. For openers, he recounts a group discussion of affirmative action with President Clinton, then backtracks to a brief autobiography stressing the poverty and loss of parents out of which he grew to become a successful postgraduate collegian, state housing official, and businessman--all without the benefit of affirmative action. His famous public-policy activities are his main concern, though, and he discusses them as straightforwardly as he does his earlier life. Connerly treats his many adversaries humanely, expressing discontent and bewilderment with their actions but never smearing them as he has been smeared (as an "oreo" and worse). Better than his equanimity is his demonstration that U. of C. minority admissions have not plummeted and that the university's outreach to poor minority high-schoolers--the untrumpeted companion policy to quashing affirmative action--is going great guns. This is top-drawer "right-wing" apologetics. Ray Olson