Bread & circuses - California's Civil Rights Initiative

National Review, Oct 28, 1996 by Kate O'Beirne

California is the incubator in which the conservatism that remade American politics in the last two decades was hatched. Could it happen again?

This November California's voters will be the first in the nation to be given the chance, in the form of Proposition 209 -- a/k/a the California Civil Rights Initiative -- to uproot state-sponsored discrimination. Polls continue to indicate that, despite an ugly disinformation battle against CCRI, they will support it by a wide margin. And for a heartening reason. Its opponents have been unable to overcome the appeal of the simple (and quintessentially American) sentiment it expresses: ''The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, or public contracting.''

If California's spoils system, cloaked in euphemisms and enforced by bureaucrats, is facing elimination, this is owing to the courageous efforts of a handful of citizens. They dared to go where politicians fear to tread. The initiative was conceived and drafted by two university professors, Glynn Custred and Thomas Wood. The campaign behind it is chaired by businessman Ward Connerly, a regent of the University of California, who led last year's successful fight to end racial and ethnic preferences at the University's nine campuses. Last spring, with the fate of Proposition 209 in doubt, Connerly asked a Washington audience, ''Is it too presumptuous of me to say that one person can indeed make a difference?'' If the voters approve CCRI, one person will have made all the difference.

Over the past months, Connerly has persevered in the face of vicious personal attacks while more timid officeholders defected from his cause. They lacked his unswerving belief in Americans' ''passion for fairness.'' In Congress there was a retreat from the proposed repeal of federal preferences. And although Connerly's efforts have been strongly supported by Governor Pete Wilson, they were cold-shouldered by Bob Dole and criticized by Jack Kemp.

But a recent debate between Connerly and the president of the state chapter of the National Organization for Women showed why CCRI is winning. Connerly stated in the simplest terms why he had joined the battle: ''All Americans are entitled to equal treatment before the law.''

His opponent produced the familiar string of worried complications. She labeled CCRI divisive, gave her own version of Bill Clinton's ''Mend it, don't end it,'' and praised Kemp's recent refusal to campaign on a ''wedge issue'' that could ''tear up the state of California.''

For his part, Kemp maintains that he supports the initiative, but he has recently adopted a key position of CCRI's opponents -- that race is one of several legitimate factors to consider in college admissions. To Connerly this kind of thing plays into the hands of those who are only to happy to exploit doublespeak and evasions in defense of preferences. He points out drily that a year ago universities were denying any use of racial and ethnic preferences, but the morning's papers reported school officials' estimates that the number of members of ''underrepresented minorities'' at their institutions could drop by 50 to 70 per cent as a result of eliminating preferences.

Governor Pete Wilson, a strong supporter, has found that the antidote to such disinformation is Prop. 209's straightforward wording. In public appearances he brings along a large copy of the initiative. This makes it hard for opponents to charge that it ''really'' equals the restoration of Jim Crow. The governor relates a TV encounter he had with Jesse Jackson. ''[T]he rather liberal moderator said, 'Well, Reverend Jackson, what do you say to that? That's pretty clear -- clear plain language. It says what it says.' And of course he starts to blubber and dither off.''

Jesse Jackson's speechlessness proved temporary, however, and he was soon likening Wilson to George Wallace at a ''sparsely attended'' demonstration outside the Capitol. Jackson was making a bus tour of the state with Eleanor Smeal of the Feminist Majority to drum up opposition to CCRI. But so far there has been more rhetoric than rallying round. The CCRI fight has not commanded the kind of attention, let alone passion, that Prop. 187 attracted two years ago. Other propositions on the ballot have been the subject of media campaigns, but not a single ad has yet been run against CCRI.

Its supporters had feared that the civil-rights and women's groups aligned against CCRI would launch a well-funded assault in the campaign's closing weeks. That could still happen -- a lavish Hollywood fundraiser is scheduled shortly. Unless it is a really massive ad campaign, however, Attorney General Dan Lungren predicts that the initiative will pass. He speculates that elected Democrats have not joined the fray because ''they've figured out they can't win on it.''

But one elected Democrat thought he had the winning formula. San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown urged initiative opponents to defeat CCRI by putting ''a white woman's face on it.'' So the latest criticism has been against an innocuous clause that tracks language from the 1964 Civil Rights Act to permit ''bona-fide qualifications based on sex.'' Feminists make the absurd claim that this language would permit full-scale discrimination against women. The clause was added so that narrow exceptions could be made to the stronger prohibition against sex discrimination in CCRI. (For example, the state could prohibit male guards from frisking women prisoners.)