Joe Gerstandt | keynote speaker, freedom fighter, freak-flag flier

“A significant degree of racism reared its head. I think for many years, whites have been upset by the tools used to fight the legacy of slavery and racism, and this became a tool to express that.”

WARD CONNERLY MAINTAINS he has simple reasons for campaigning to end affirmative action. “I’m not just fighting to end racial preferences—I’m fighting to alter the way people still see Black people as weak and lazy,” says Connerly, a Black real estate consultant who founded and chairs the anti-affirmative action American Civil Rights Institute. “People are rethinking race, and as they do, they’re having a hard time thinking that Black people whose ancestors overcame slavery can’t make it on their own. Because, let’s face it, at the end of the day, when we talk about affirmative action, we’re talking about Black people.”

Affirmative action supporters concede that during the last decade, Connerly has been successful at connecting with voters in California, Washington and Michigan as they’ve passed measures banning race- and gender-based “preference” programs. But they contend he’s done it by getting white citizens to act on their suspicions about the inferiority of people of color. “In Michigan, voters were being asked to give up a small modicum of white privilege, and they wouldn’t do it,” says Shanta Driver, national co-chair of By Any Means Necessary, a pro-affirmative action group known by its acronym BAMN. “They voted against integration.”

The debate over how and why California, Washington and especially Michigan voted to gut their affirmative action programs has intensified since Connerly announced last fall that he and his allies would be taking their crusade to as many as nine more states for the 2008 elections. While Connerly now says his team has narrowed the list to five—Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma—he still argues that it could be the last stand for affirmative action.