Posted on 04/18/2002 11:04:45 PM PDT by kattracks
Is Halle Berry? Are NBC newscaster Soledad O’Brien and passé singer/dancer Paula Abdul? How ‘bout Jennifer Beals of “Flashdance” fame? NBA star Shane Battier?
All of these people are at least half White, some mostly White, but they all have some Black blood.
Ward Connerly is my hero. Because he doesn’t care what race they are, and doesn’t want our government to care anymore either.
The Indiana Jones of the racial frontier, Connerly’s one of the few Americans who has devoted his life to fighting for true racial equality and slaying the rattlesnakes and other power-hungry creatures of the civil rights industry. While others claim to be civil rights activists, this true patriot is the only real thing.
“Race has no place in American life or law” is the motto of Connerly’s American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI).
In Connerly’s view—and poll after poll indicates it’s an overwhelming majority of America’s view, too—true racism will only be eradicated when race-based government programs, initiatives, requirements, and laws that separate us, are eradicated.
That includes ending racial preferences in college admissions, something which Connerly, through successful Proposition 209, heroically risked his business—and often his safety—to do, in the California public university system, as a Regent of the University of California.
That includes eliminating government-mandated quotas in minority hiring for businesses and set-asides.
It also includes erasing racial classifications by government, governed by the “One-Drop Rule.” According to this age-old law created by racists, Americans with even one drop of Black blood are considered Black by the government--for many purposes, including racial preferences and government set-asides for minorities.
It was a law originally created to keep all but “racially pure” Whites from ever enjoying the full benefits of our freedoms. The law’s horrid practice is best illustrated in the 1927 musical “Showboat,” in which “Julie” a mixed-race singer who passes for White must forever relinquish her dream and career as an entertainer when her partially-Black racial makeup is discovered. Instead of entertaining on showboats and in fancy clubs, she can only hope to sing “Old Man River” with Black sharecroppers, boathands, and servants.
But today, the one-drop rule would not be used against Julie. It would be used against everyone else. The one-drop rule would likely get Julie—and Lonette McKee, the half-White actress who played the role recently on Broadway--a great job in a government-run facility or part ownership in a government subsidized development, regardless of merit. And like multi-millionaire Oprah or Bill Cosby, regardless of need, Julie would be eligible to purchase radio and TV stations, specially set aside for minorities, at discount rates unavailable to even the most deserving and disadvantaged White males.
Connerly has every reason in the world to take advantage of this fallacious government boondoggle, instead of opposing it. As a Black American, he stands to gain in business opportunities and elsewhere by claiming minority status.
But Ward Connerly doesn’t identify as a Black American. He calls himself what he is and what we all are—just plain “American.”
As Connerly rightly recognizes, the civil rights industry wants to keep the one-drop rule. Because, otherwise their power is diluted. When personalities like mostly Asian Tiger Woods describe themselves as “Cablinasian,” they can’t be used as soldiers in the racism victimhood paradigm. (That didn’t stop race-obsessive former NBA star Charles Barkley--who has a White wife, Maureen, and half-White daughter, Christiana--from whining to Sports Illustrated that the lengthening of the Augusta golf course, on which the Masters PGA tournament is played—is “blatant racism” against “Black athlete” Woods. Multi-millionaire Barkley’s hardly disadvantaged half-White daughter will benefit greatly from the one-drop rule by claiming minority status.)
When minority races and ethnic groups become increasingly diluted, as the 2000 Census—with many Blacks also checking boxes of other ethnic groups—indicates, and if a mostly White person can’t claim racial minority status, say a happy good-bye to affirmative action, racial set-asides, and other such unfairnesses.
Given the ridiculous race-fest hoopla and moralizing at this year’s Academy Awards, Connerly asks why the media classify Berry as Black, when she is at least half White. A la Berry, there’s a group-think mandate that Black-identified actors who aren't really Black must strongly identify with Blacks so the American audience won't make a "mistake" and see them as something else. “She assumes not the racial identity of her White mother who raised her, but that of her abusive Black father, a man with whom she has had no contact, and by her own admission, a man who was not a good father,” Connerly said. “Her mother told her to be ‘Black’ in order to inoculate herself from prejudice. This is a silly remnant of the one-drop rule.”
That’s why courageous Connerly has introduced the Racial Privacy Initiative (RPI), attempting to get it on the California ballot. RPI would eliminate boxes on government forms asking for racial information and keep it private, disabling government-imposed racial preferences once and for all.
As Connerly said, “RPI suggests that it is time to confront these increasingly outdated concepts of ‘race.’ “
Connerly’s American Civil Rights Coalitionneeds 50,000 signaturesof registered California voters by the April 19th (Friday) deadline to get his very worthy cause on the ballot. Like his defeat of affirmative action in college admissions, Connerly’s goal is to get this initiative rolling in other states—to defeat true, government-sponsored racism once and for all. That’s why it’s so important that RPI get on the ballot in California.
As Frank Sinatra would sing, if RPI can make it there, it’ll make it anywhere.
It’s time to end government racism once and for all.
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©2002
Mine too!
Thanks for posting this article!!
If it means 'a follower of Jesse Jackson' -- then I think not . .
Reginald Jones shakes the uncivil rights program to it's foundation.
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