Quota Cowards : The GOP and preferences

National Review, Dec 20, 1999 by John J. Miller

MATTHEW GLAVIN walked into the Atlanta mayor's office on June 14 with a convoy of television cameras in tow. He had come to deliver by hand a letter warning the city that if it didn't abandon its minority set-aside program, his Southeastern Legal Foundation would sue.

Democrats leaped to the defense of Atlanta's racial-preference policies. "We have finally hit upon somebody to hate. Matt Glavin is someone that I hate," declared state representative Billy McKinney. Mayor Bill Campbell was even more blunt. "We will fight to the death," he said at a press conference, in which he also likened the coming legal battle to "a shootout at the O.K. Corral"-a rather unfortunate phrasing, coming as it did just days before a local day-trader went on a shooting spree that left twelve others dead. All of a sudden, "The City Too Busy to Hate" was seething with it.

Both sides suffered blows. Glavin's public-interest law firm lost seven board members when the Georgia Black Chamber of Commerce vowed to boycott companies that had affiliations with the group. And Campbell has come under withering criticism from the city's press: Cynthia Tucker, the liberal editorial-page editor of the Atlanta Constitution, even compared him to Bull Connor.

But it's also true that both sides have benefited from the dispute. Glavin's fundraising has improved as a result of the controversy, and he is almost certain to win his lawsuit. Campbell, for his part, is raising his national profile among liberals. In November, Emerge magazine put him on its cover.

The confrontation in Atlanta is emblematic of where the debate over racial preferences stands today. Conservatives have much to cheer: Apart from a handful of unimportant exceptions, no race-preference program has survived a legal challenge since the Supreme Court's Croson decision in 1989. Every few weeks, it seems, there's another victory, as some political jurisdiction, school district, or public university comes under pressure in the courts and abandons color-conscious policies. A long road lies ahead, and litigation is an expensive and unreliable ally. But the path is well marked.

Conservatives, however, are hobbled in the political arena by their own lack of self-confidence, which makes them no match for their impassioned liberal opponents. Many Republicans refuse to embrace the cause. And- although voters in California and Washington State have passed ballot initiatives banning racial preferences in public education, employment, and contracting-liberals view the drive to end affirmative action as a handy villain. "I'm persuaded that using racial preferences as a political issue encourages minority turnout and helps the Democrats," says Thomas Wood, coauthor of California's anti-preferences ballot measure, Proposition 209. "The harm preferences cause to whites is diffuse, and the benefit conferred to particular blacks and Hispanics is often tangible." Many Republican political consultants feel the same way.

Politicians who campaign to ban racial preferences are simply asking for abuse. In 1996, the anti-209 campaign ran television ads saying, "David Duke wants you to vote Yes on 209." Crosses blazed in the background. Last year, Missouri Democrats sponsored radio announcements that blamed church burnings on the GOP. And this summer, Atlanta's mayor Campbell offered his own variation: "Just because these right-wing hate groups dress themselves in suits instead of robes doesn't mean it's not still racism."

Faced with these attacks, many Republicans take the path of least resistance and remain silent. "The worst thing you can be called in politics today is a racist," says Abigail Thernstrom of the Manhattan Institute. "In one sense this is positive. It shows our country's commitment to racial equality. But it's also made preferences a lethal issue politically."

The GOP repeats constantly that it wants to win minority votes, and no doubt it does. But something like 98 percent of Republican presidential voters are non-Hispanic whites, while about 20 percent of Democratic presidential voters are minorities. The key element in the GOP strategy is not outreach, but pacification; most Republicans don't want to do anything, such as trying to ban racial preferences, that risks igniting the Democrats' base.

If the GOP were truly interested in attracting minority voters, it would try to appeal to them through conservative principle. In 1996, blacks in California were more than twice as likely to vote for 209 as for Bob Dole. It turns out that color blindness does have a constituency among the people who are supposed to oppose it. But Republicans won't put those 209 supporters into the GOP column with a weak message on race.

Color-blind law had at least one minor triumph in Congress this year, when members voted to delete racial-classification requirements in the juvenile-justice bill. By and large, however, the GOP Congress has been unreceptive to the idea of attacking preferences. Republican House leaders did such an effective job, in the last Congress, of scuttling the civil- rights reform bill introduced by Florida congressman Charles Canady that Canady hasn't even bothered to reintroduce it.