So the other week Janice Camarena did what any red-blooded Californian would do. She sued. Now she’s a test case for those who want to remove any trace of racial preference in the state’s vast community college system. The Black Bridge doesn’t seem to be an egregious piece of race-based social engineering. Few would begrudge minority students special help early in college. and there were other sections of English 101. Yet Camarena’s case briefly broke through the O.J. chatter on Los Angeles talk radio. “Everybody should have an equal chance,” she says, “regardless of the color of their skin.”
The color of their skin. Never far from the surface of politics, race is rising with raging force in the presidential campaign now beginning, A quarter century ago the issue was busing. In 1988 it was crime. Last week the floor of the House was the scene of vicious debate over welfare reform. Black Democrats hurled accusations of racism and Nazism, while victorious Republicans (the measure prevailed, 234199) compared aid recipients to alligators and wolves.
But the most profound fight the one tapping deepest into the emotions of everyday American life -is over affirmative action. It’s setting the lights blinking on studio consoles, igniting angry rhetoric in state legislatures and focusing new attention on the word “fairness.” When does fairness become “reverse discrimination”? When is it fair to discriminate on the basis of race or gender? Louder than before, Americans seem to be saying, “Never.”
The issue is getting the most attention, naturally enough, in California. Colossal. diverse, the Golden State is where national trends are launched. The newest is a closely watched initiative with a PC-sounding name, the California Civil Rights Initiative. Likely to be on the state ballot next year, it would bar any form of affirmative-action preference–race, gender, ethnicity, national origin–in state hiring contracting or education.
California Republicans have a knack for recognizing–and methodically speaking to–the resentments of white suburbanites. Richard Nixon summarized their angst in his 1968 campaign for “law and order.” In 1980, Ronald Reagan won on the strength of antitax fervor created by California’s Proposition 13 tax revolt.
Now Pete Wilson, a 61-year-old epitome of suburban solidity, thinks it’s his turn. Last year the California governor capitalized on anti-immigration sentiment in his drive for re-election. Last month he announced that he would support the anti-affirmative-action initiative. Then last week he declared he had a “duty” to seek the White House in the name of “fairness” for people who “work hard, pay their taxes and obey the law.” A key to Wilsonian “fairness”: abolishing racial and gender preferences.
A master surfer of political waves, Wilson landed in Washington late last week for a round of political chores. In his first interview in the capital, he adroitly made the requisite concessions. He wouldn’t “quibble, " he told NEWSWEEK, with descriptions of him as a past supporter of affirmative action and minority “set-asides.” He simply came to the conclusion recently that preferences were unfair and unworkable.
Maybe so, but Wilson’s Smooth conversion-and decision to move toward a formal presidential candidacy-underscores affirmative action’s appeal to GOP politicians. They see it as a way to prove their conservative bona fides to the rank and file. They also see it as a classically divisive “wedge issue,” the kind that forces your foe to choose which constituency he wants to offend-in this case, either suburban white swing voters or traditional liberals. “It’s a winner for us any way you look at it,” says Republican strategist Bill Kristol.
The NEWSWEEK Poll shows why. The chasm between blacks and whites is deep, though minorities are more dubious of preferences than the rhetoric of their most vocal leaders suggests. By a 79-14 margin, whites oppose racial preferences in employment or college admissions; minorities support them by a 50-46 margin.
The affirmative-action issue is tearing at the Democratic Party, which lost the white male vote by a breath-taking 62-36 margin in the 1994 elections. The party’s right wing is in open revolt. The Democratic Leadership Council, a group of self-described moderates, has become an anti-affirmative-action cell. When he assumed chairmanship of the DLC earlier this month, Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut declared that race and gender preferences were “patently unfair.”
The Democratic left is answering back. Jesse Jackson led a rally in New Haven last week to protest Lieberman’s remarks. “We submit to the senator of this state,” Jackson said, “that we have marched too long, died too young, bled too profusely, been to too many funerals of young mothers. to go back now.” The state’s other senator, Democratic National Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, backed Jackson’s view.
Caught in the middle, the Clinton Administration is doing the usual: emitting a cacophony of mixed signals. Some White House officials privately complain that GOP candidates are exploiting race. Elsewhere the administration is reviewing affirmative-action programs and has already turned down at least one, for student interns at the Commerce Department. A major speech on the issue by President Clinton has been put off until next month. So last week the administration sent forth its leading civil-rights attorney to defend affirmative action-but only speaking for himself.
Clinton, talking earnestly to college students, yearned out loud for a way to avoid divisiveness Meanwhile, the Republicans are driving their “wedge.” Charlie Black, top adviser to GOP contender Phil Gramm, linked the president to another California politician, the abrasively liberal Maxine Waters of Los Angeles. “In the end, Clinton will do whatever she tells him to do,” Black said tartly. Jackson attacked from the other side, issuing a warning to the White House in a NEWSWEEK interview. “If they sacrifice justice on the altar of expediency, we will fight back,” he said. “We will not stand idly by.”
Among Republicans, there’s no philosophical disagreement over affirmative action. But the GOP debate could get nasty just the same, if only over the question of who says “no” with the most conviction.
Republicans are scrambling to up the antiante. A promise to abolish affirmative action was a centerpiece of Phil Gramm’s announcement pageant last month. A day later - and the day before Gramm arrived in California for a state GOP convention Wilson announced his support for the ballot initiative. Then, last week, columnist Pat Buchanan declared his presidential candidacy in New Hampshire arid staked a justifiable claim to purity. He labeled his opponents “leap-year conservatives.”
The Republicans have their own man in the middle, front runner Bob Dole. The majority leader has promised to introduce legislation banning racial and gender preferences in government programs. But Dole had long supported minority set-asides, and prides himself on his civil-rights record. This week he will host a three-hour meeting in his office to discuss a legislative course and try to do what he does best -broker a deal. Among those expected to attend: Democratic D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, former Bush White House counsel Boyden Gray and conservative black columnist Armstrong Williams.
That leaves Wilson, who seemed to be basking in the glow of his own possibilities. Though he hasn’t yet officially announced, White House insiders consider him the greatest threat to Clinton’s re-election. Jackson has a harsher view. “He’s nothing more than a sophisticated George Wallace,” he told NEWSWEEK. Hardly. Wilson is a social liberal in some respects, with a strong record of supporting abortion rights, gay rights and gun control. Lean and placid, carefully turned out last Saturday in a gray suit, the Yale-educated Wilson has always been adept at putting a bland face on middle-class anger. Voters seem to like the calm reflection of themselves he offers. It is a formula that Wilson has used to win in the past, and that. he hopes to use in the affirmative-action wars ahead. ..MR.-
75% think that qualified blacks should not receive preference over equally qualified whites in getting into college or getting jobs ..MR0-
