Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences - Hardcover

Connerly, Ward

3.58

36 ratings by Goodreads

9781893554047: Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 189355404X ISBN 13: 9781893554047

Publisher: Encounter Books, 2000

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Ward Connerly first burst onto the American scene 1995 as the University of California Regent who had forced the largest public university in the country to become color-blind in its admissions policies. Connerly led the 1996 campaign to pass California's Proposition 209. In 1998, he spearheaded a similar successful anti-discrimination measure in Washington. Creating Equal chronicles Connerly's unique friendship with California governor Pete Wilson, as well as his encounters with figures like Bill Clinton and Al Gore, mogul Rupert Murdoch, Gen. Colin Powell, and Jesse Jackson. But above all, this book tells about how one man's willingness to break ranks created a movement whose end is not yet in sight.

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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.

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