Just when Coloradans thought we might have to think for ourselves for a change, Ward Connerly jetted into town this week to promote his California-style ban on affirmative action.
Colorado is one of eight states targeted by Connerly for anti-affirmative action initiatives on the November 2008 ballot. He led the fight to pass a 1996 California initiative that barred preferential treatment on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in public employment, education and contracting. Clones of that California ban later passed in Washington state and in Michigan.
As much as we respect the right of out-of-state politicians to export their pet projects to Colorado, we can’t avoid noting that history is not on Connerly’s side.
In 1998, California millionaire Ron Unz paid professional firms to put an initiative on Colorado’s ballot, Amendment 31, that would have banned bilingual education. Fort Collins philanthropist Pat Stryker stepped up to rally Coloradans against Unz and voters defeated his nostrum.
Coloradans should be equally wary of rallying to Connerly’s war against affirmative action – because it has proven to be a disaster in his home state. Political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson reports black students made up just 2 percent of the more than 4,000 entering freshmen at the UCLA last fall – just one-fifth of the 10 percent they comprised before Connerly’s ban on affirmative action passed. Similar declines in minority students occurred at other elite California schools.
Passage of a California-style ban on affirmative action would likely have similar baleful effects in Colorado. To cite only the most obvious example, it would reverse the progress the University of Colorado has made in recruiting qualified African-American, Latino and Native American students under the leadership of CU President Hank Brown.
Ward Connerly may believe we live in a world where the cruel legacy of poverty, slavery and discrimination has vanished. But the fact is that Colorado’s makeup is rapidly becoming more diverse, with an especially strong growth of Hispanic citizens. Unless the state educates all our young people to their full potential, we will be burdened with a permanent underclass that lacks the tools to compete in a 21st century global economy.
As the United Negro College Fund so eloquently puts it, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” Colorado shouldn’t sacrifice its economic future and the dreams of our children to further Ward Connerly’s wrongheaded agenda.
