Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #635770 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 279 pages

Amazon.com 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

From Library Journal
Connerly is one of the most maligned public figures in the United States; no one can say he is dishonest, duplicitous, or confused. His integrity fairly shines, and this causes his opponents the utmost discomfiture, for not only is he personally invulnerable, his basic argument is almost unanswerable: that Martin Luther King's dream of judging people by character and not by the color of their skin should be the public policy of the day instead of race-based affirmative action or demeaning quota systems of any kind. As Connerly reads his autobiography, one senses that he has minimized the assaults he has endured. Bitterness is there, but mostly he sticks to his main purpose, to describe how he came to be and to outline the public policy ideas and events in which he has participated for many years. His early foray into California politics is described, particularly his relationship with former governor Pete Wilson and current San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, each of whom influenced him in different ways. As a reader, Connerly is effective; his performance is straightforward and uncomplicated. His voice mirrors his ideas. A vital bit of contemporary history for any public and general academic library. - Don Wismer, Cary Memorial Lib., Wayne, ME
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The University of California regent who got that institution to dump affirmative action and then spearheaded successful California and Washington ballot initiatives overturning those states' affirmative action policies explains himself very well. For openers, he recounts a group discussion of affirmative action with President Clinton, then backtracks to a brief autobiography stressing the poverty and loss of parents out of which he grew to become a successful postgraduate collegian, state housing official, and businessman--all without the benefit of affirmative action. His famous public-policy activities are his main concern, though, and he discusses them as straightforwardly as he does his earlier life. Connerly treats his many adversaries humanely, expressing discontent and bewilderment with their actions but never smearing them as he has been smeared (as an "oreo" and worse). Better than his equanimity is his demonstration that U. of C. minority admissions have not plummeted and that the university's outreach to poor minority high-schoolers--the untrumpeted companion policy to quashing affirmative action--is going great guns. This is top-drawer "right-wing" apologetics. Ray Olson

Customer Reviews

Superb
From the first chapter--describing Connerly's visit to the White House to discuss race relations with Bill Clinton and Al Gore--to the last, Creating Equal is a thoroughly captivating memoir. Connerly provides a fascinating behind-the-scenes history of the battles to eliminate racial preferences in California, Houston, Tex., Washington, and Florida. Connerly's steadfastness in the face of vicious personal attacks is inspiring-a real testament to his commitment to racial progress. This commitment, we learn, is nothing new. For example, as a student at Sacramento State, Connerly learned that local landlords were refusing to rent out their apartments to minority students. In response, Connerly--despite a threat from the college president--led a massive investigation and helped bring about California's fair housing law. Politics aside, the stories from Connerly's hardscrabble childhood are poignant without being sappy--readers will love getting to know Connerly's hardworking, country-music loving Uncle James and his tough-as-nails grandmother. For people who care about the future of race relations, this cogently argued, beautifully written book is a must-read.

CREATING EQUAL Creates Second Thoughts
Over my life course, I have read many books on race relations, social justice, and social inequality. Ward Connerly book's CREATING EQUAL: MY FIGHT AGAINST RACE PREFERENCES will be one of the most memorable. Why? Ward Connerly does not take the popular position.

Readers do not have to like him or his ideas to realize that Connerly is a man a great courage. He is well known and even hated for his position on affirmative action. However, reading his elegant words within CREATING EQUAL creates second thoughts among those who are strongly opposed to his ideology. Connerly lays out how his upbringing drove him to believe that Affirmative Action does more damage than good. Most of his logical positions are solid well thought out and have a great deal of merit. Nevertheless, we can find flaws in his position.

I have actually required CREATING EQUAL to be read by social work majors who are strongly in favor of affirmative action. After reading this book, ALL of them changed their position. This is not to say that all of them started to oppose affirmative action, but clearly, their positions in favor of affirmative action were softened. Reading CREATING EQUAL creates second thoughts.

To induce students to use their critical thinking skills, I often require them to read A HOPE IN THE UNSEEN immediately after reading CREATING EQUAL. Suskind, the author of A HOPE IN THE UNSEEN, chronicles the life of an African American young man's struggle to gain an education. Cedric Jennings' life provides the strongest argument for affirmative action. It is utterly fascinating to witness students synthesizing the content of these two well-written books. So, I recommend that everyone read both books - one immediately following the other.

Autobiography in the great American tradition
There was a time when public figures with significant views on the great issues of the day would write pamphlets or treatises, even short books, detailing their positions. One thinks, for instance, of such writers as Thomas Paine and Alexander Hamilton at the time of the Founding, or in recent decades of Barry Goldwater's great book The Conscience of a Conservative, or William Simon's A Time for Truth. These are all polemical works, meant to argue for political positions, which, though intensely personal, are uncluttered by personality. They served an essential public service by addressing vital questions in a brief and readable form. As a result, they were widely read and quite influential.

Today, at a time when even White House pets have bestselling memoirs, these kinds of arguments are now grafted on to autobiographical texts for no discernible reason other than to exploit the current trend in publishing. It was with some trepidation then that I approached Ward Connerly's book, Creating Equal. I admire him and the battle he has waged over the past decade, but I honestly expected to skim through the typically pro forma story of his life to get to the meatier sections where he would present the intellectual case against racial preference programs. But an unexpected thing happened on the way through the boring bits; it turns out that, though much of his tale is familiar, Ward Connerly's own life experience is one of his best arguments.

As is common in American society, and only getting more so, Connerly comes of mixed racial stock : Black, White, and Native American. He is "Black" only by the terms of the ancient and racist "one drop rule" and by family tradition; in reality his race defies categorization. He did not meet his father until very late in life and, his mother having died, was raised first by an aunt and uncle, then by his grandmother. His grandmother and uncle were the real formative influences on his character, both of them strict and demanding that he make something of himself. His Uncle James in particular was a role model, asking only one thing of life : that people treat him like a man; in exchange always carrying himself like one. Together they instilled in Connerly a burning desire to be judged on his own merit.

It thus seems natural that when, as a member of the University of California Board of Regents, Connerly was approached by a couple who had statistical evidence of the use of quotas by the UC colleges, he turned their cause into his cause. His account of the battle for Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative, and then subsequent contests in Washington, Texas and Florida, make for interesting reading, though they are perhaps not as viscerally powerful as the story of his early life.

Throughout the book, Connerly is animated by a simple timeless creed which gives the book its title :

I celebrated July 4 1995 with a heightened awareness of the personal freedom at the core of nationhood. When the Founding Fathers said that we were all created equal, they were proposing an audacious theory that ultimately inflamed the rest of the world. By fits and starts, Americans had tried to make that theory into a reality, with abolitionism, the Emancipation Proclamation, and, of course, the civil rights movement, which instituted sweeping revisions of the law that have brought us ever closer to the fulfillment of the promise of our national life. I felt in my heart that race preferences--by whatever name--were not a continuation of that progress, but an obstacle in the road to freedom and equality. At best a diversion, and at worst a giant step backward, affirmative action preferences caused us to lose sight of the task we inherited from the Founders--creating equal as the only category that counts in America.

There's a deep irony in the fact that these beliefs, traceable to Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, should now make Ward Connerly anathema to the Democratic Party and to the institutionalized civil rights movement. We have reached a sad point in our nation's history where to the inheritors of the legacy of Jefferson and King the idea of a color blind society has been transmuted into a weird kind of racism itself. It should not have required courage to, as Connerly boldly does, advocate that race be ignored in awarding government jobs and contracts, but it did, and this demonstration of courage makes Connerly into a heroic figure, willing to brave epithets, threats and hatreds to vindicate his convictions. This memoir, harkening back to The Autobiography of Ben Franklin and Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery, partakes of the great American tradition of self-reliance and the demand that each of us be judged individually; this gives it an impact all out of proportion to what I expected.

GRADE : A