Quota quest: of Obama's vulnerability on racial preferences

National Review, Sept 1, 2008 by John J. Miller

THE election of Barack Obama threatens to become the worst thing that ever happened to race-based affirmative action. So says liberal columnist Bonnie Erbe. "What could do more damage to the argument that African Americans deserve racial preferences than a majority of Americans voting to put an African American in the White House?" she asked in July. Her answer: "Little, from where I sit."

The case for racial preferences almost certainly would weaken during an Obama presidency. Sanctimonious liberals everywhere would face a squirm-inducing question: "If racism in America is so bad, then how come ...?" The smart ones will observe that most whites actually cast their votes for John McCain (as seems likely, based on current polls). Even so, Obama's success would force the conversation about racial preferences to shift fundamentally.

To a certain extent, it already has. On the night of January 26, after Obama won South Carolina's Democratic primary, supporters at a victory party broke into a chant: "Race doesn't matter! Race doesn't matter!" The mood was so jubilant that even a veteran race hustler like Rev. Jeremiah Wright would have been tempted to join in.

Yet the case for racial preferences and their ongoing reality are separate things. Obama may inspire all kinds of happy talk about national healing. (If you think the media are already treating him as a post-racial messiah, just wait until his inauguration day.) At the same time, his administration would strive to make sure that racial bean-counting shaped voting districts, college admissions, K-12 demographics, public contracting, and business hiring.

Personnel is policy, and Obama almost certainly would nominate judges and appoint civil-rights officials from the ranks of activist organizations whose very purpose is to push the idea that race matters, contrary to what those South Carolina chanters had the audacity to hope. Just translate the name of a leading Hispanic group, the National Council of La Raza: In complete English, it's the National Council of the Race.

Obama isn't special in this regard. Nearly any Democrat in the White House would draw from the same pool of people and advance the same color-coded causes. Raul Yzaguirre, who served as president of the National Council of the Race for three decades, was a co-chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

Some foes of racial preferences nevertheless have felt the urge to cheer on Obama, in the belief that his success represents at least a symbolic victory for colorblindness. Ward Connerly is both a Republican and America's best-known foe of racial preferences. In February, he sent a $500 donation to Obama. "My token contribution wasn't an endorsement," says Connerly, who supported Rudy Giuliani in the GOP primaries and now plans to vote for McCain. "But I wanted to applaud his efforts to take America beyond race."

Although Obama's campaign cashed Connerly's check, the Democrat has refused to pay back any respects. In fact, he's done quite the opposite. On July 27, McCain endorsed the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative-a Connerly-led ballot referendum that would ban racial preferences in the state. Later that day, Obama pounced, in remarks at a conference of minority journalists: "I think in the past [McCain had] been opposed to these Ward Connerly initiatives as divisive. And I think he's right. These are not designed to solve a big problem, but they're all too often designed to drive a wedge between people."

The first point was fair enough: In the past, McCain has blasted efforts to ban racial preferences. He once even labeled them "divisive." McCain doesn't like to admit changing his mind, but apparently he has-in a direction that's both more conservative and more in keeping with public sentiment. Connerly's initiatives, after all, have passed in the Democrat-leaning states of California, Michigan, and Washington. In November, they're likely to appear on ballots in Arizona, Colorado, and Nebraska. No wonder Obama sees them as divisive: They set him apart from the views of most Americans, at a time when he's trying to become broadly acceptable.

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Obama has a long history of backing racial preferences. As a state senator in Illinois, he called them "absolutely necessary." Nothing changed when he moved to Washington. The man who recently spoke in Berlin about the need to tear down "the walls between races and tribes" has supported a bill that would recognize ethnic Hawaiians as a federal tribe with a series of race-based privileges. Two years ago, Obama recorded a radio ad in which he urged Michigan voters to rally against Proposal 2, the Connerly initiative: "It would wipe out programs that help women and minorities get a good education and jobs.... It moves us further away from a country of full opportunity."

As a presidential candidate, Obama has tried to sound more conciliatory. When the topic of racial preferences comes up, he says he's against quotas--politicians always say they're against quotas--and suggests considering class-based preferences. "We have to think about affirmative action and craft it in such a way where some of our children who are advantaged aren't getting more favorable treatment than a poor white kid who has struggled more," he said in July. But make no mistake: Obama would not supplant racial preferences with socioeconomic ones. Instead, he might supplement them, further chipping away at the notion that merit ought to outweigh all else when awarding anything from public-university slots to federal highway contracts.