Ward Connerly: Systemic racism and today's California -- Why voters should reject restoring racial preferences

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Sensitivity training won’t solve systematic racism: Dr. Alveda King

In the past four months, Americans have stood witness to widespread arson, looting, vandalism, and the breakdown of law and order. Frequently, those committing and fomenting the violence claim they are fighting against systemic racism.

I grew up in segregated Louisiana, where real systemic racism was part of daily life.

Yet in my lifetime, the United States has achieved steady and strong racial progress, allowing Black men and women to be full and equal Americans. Individual racism will always exist; but in this country, the system is no longer racist.

Yet for decades, measures to “address” the racism of the past have inflicted new racial discrimination on Americans.

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In 1996, Californians roundly rejected such modern-day bigotry by adopting Proposition 209, which banned racial preferences and discrimination in public university admissions, public contracting, and public employment in the state.

We — as Americans, as a united country — have achieved Dr. King’s dream. Dr. King’s children lived to be judged by what they do, not what they look like.

Alas, nearly a quarter of a century later, the stokers of racial grievance have refused to let progress stand. They have mounted a campaign — Proposition 16 — to overturn California’s existing race neutrality.

It is no accident that this challenge to Prop 209 has arrived at the same time as mass protests and race riots. For four months now, thugs and rioters — along with the media and political class that enable them — have been tearing at the social fabric of this country.

The unthinkable — such as defunding major police departments — has become accepted as “reform.” Judging people based on their skin color has once again become accepted in the highest echelons of American society.

Americans who speak out against such lawlessness and intolerance have been physically attacked for their race and political views.

Measures to “address” the racism of the past have inflicted new racial discrimination on Americans.

Statues of the Founding Fathers and other historical figures, such as Christopher Columbus — even President Ulysses Grant and the Black abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass — have been torn down by rejoicing mobs.

Each day, long-established political norms and moral values are being trashed, along with the social contract that Americans made with their government and each other.

All this chaos and moral confusion is the perfect opening for supporters of Prop 16 to claim —and be believed by far too many — that their aim is “diversity” and “equity,” not a return to state-mandated practice of treating human beings as racial groups instead of individuals.

In truth, the past four months have offered a cold reminder that equality, which is central to the American creed, can no longer be taken for granted.

In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. declared in his “I Have a Dream” speech: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’… I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

We — as Americans, as a united country — have achieved Dr. King’s dream. Dr. King’s children lived to be judged by what they do, not what they look like.

Today, however, the official Black Lives Matter movement, along with radical leftist groups, such as Antifa — many of which are supported with millions of dollars from corporations, and all of whom are coddled by the left-wing media — make it a point to judge, target, and attack Americans based on the color of their skin.

The country as a whole is now caught in a vicious spiral of undoing its hard-won racial equality, and California stands as the vanguard of this cultural revolution.

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Soon after far-left state legislators put Prop 16 on the ballot, they adopted measures requiring hard racial quotas for corporate boards, forced racial indoctrination for students, and a committee to “study” issuing reparations for Californians whose ancestors were slaves.

If Prop 16 passes, this virus of racial divisiveness will spread to the rest of the country.

We, as Americans, cannot let that happen. We must remember the American creed and its true promise of equality, as stated by Dr. King. We must not remain silent as our country literally burns.

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In California, our defense of equality begins with upholding equal treatment under the law and saying no to the racial discrimination promised by Prop 16.

We urge all Americans who believe in the foundational principles of this country to support us.