Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences - Hardcover

Connerly, Ward

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1594032181 ISBN 13: 9781594032189

Publisher: Encounter Books, 2007

Synopsis

From his impoverished childhood in segregated pre-war Louisiana to his audience with Bill Clinton at the White House, Ward Connerly's panoramic book spans a civil rights story that's making headlines from coast to coast. Since 1995, when Connerly first burst onto the American scene as the University of California Regent who forced the nation's largest public university to become color blind in its admissions policies, Connerly has led a national campaign to end race preference. In 1996, he passed Proposition 209 in California and two years later he led I-200, an identical measure, to victory in Washington state. He is now battling Governor Jeb Bush in Florida as he attempts to put a Florida Civil Rights Initiative on the ballot there. A personal book that gives the inside story of Connerly's battle against race preferences, Creating Equal names names and tells it like it is. It is destined to provoke debate from the dining room table to the halls of Congress. Connerly's encounters with the great and near great ranging from Jesse Jackson and Al Gore to Bill Clinton and Rupert Murdoch illuminate this book that has been praised by writers such as Shelby Steele. Illustrated with family and political photographs.

About this title

Review:

Ward Connerly, the champion of California's controversial Proposition 209 outlawing racial preferences in state government, offers a compelling memoir and polemic with Creating Equal. Political figures don't often write books worth reading, but Connerly can both turn a good phrase (liberals, he says, "need to believe that Rosa Parks is still stuck in the back of the bus, even though we live in a time when Oprah is on a billboard on the side of the bus") and tell a good story (as when he describes tracking down his long-lost biological father in Louisiana). Connerly has generated strong reactions, many of them negative, ever since he burst on the scene as a University of California regent opposed to racial preferences in student admissions. Because he is black (or, more accurately, of mixed black, white, and Indian ancestry), Connerly was derisively labeled an "Uncle Tom" for his efforts. Conservatives will applaud Creating Equal, while many of Connerly's sparring partners will recognize its thoughtfulness: "Affirmative action was the kissing cousin of welfare, a seemingly humane social gesture that was actually quite diabolical in its consequences--not only causing racial conflict because of its inequities, but also validating blacks' fears of inferiority and reinforcing racial stereotypes." Moreover, Connerly's insider account of Proposition 209 (plus similar efforts in Houston and Washington state) will appeal to political junkies of all stripes. Regardless of their views on the philosophical content of Connerly's crusade, readers will find Creating Equal to be a surprisingly good book. --John J. Miller

About the Author:

Ward Connerly is the founder and the president of the American Civil Rights Institute and author of Creating Equal: My Fight against Race Preferences and Lessons from My Uncle James: Beyond Skin Color to the Content of Our Character. He has been inducted as a lifetime member into the California Building Industry Hall of Fame and has been a member of the Rotary Club of Sacramento for over fifteen years. In addition to receiving numerous awards, he has been profiled on 60 Minutes, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek magazine, the cover of Parade magazine, and virtually every major news magazine in America. He has also appeared on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Crossfire, Hannity & Colmes, Meet the Press, Dateline, NBC Nightly News, CNN, and C-SPAN.

About this edition

• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1594032181
• ISBN 13: 9781594032189
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 298