Ward Connerly's Battle In Arizona

Fresh off a massive success in Michigan, Ward Connerly is taking his battle to five states in 2008 to have racial preferences banned in all state activity. Jennifer Rubin has a nice piece on the effort in Arizona, including this story that served as part of the impetus for taking the effort to Arizona:

Andrew Thomas, Maricopa County Attorney, is the local honorary chair of the Arizona initiative. He has been inspired to join the cause against racial preferences because of his experience battling against classification by race in the county court system. He describes two separate courts for drunk driving defendants -- the “Spanish DUI court” and the “Native American DUI Court” -- which have been set up to oversee probation violations of defendants by racial group. As opposed to the “regular” DUI courts, these special courts, according to Thomas, hand out lighter sentences for probation violations. He terms this system “amazing and disturbing.” He notes that “even at the height of Jim Crow we had people brought to the same bar of justice.”

Thomas’ lawsuit challenging this system was dismissed but he is appealing the case. It is not clear whether the Arizona initiative will be drafted so as to cover the Maricopa court system. However, the initiative proponents hope that the impact of a successful public referendum on racial classifications will, at the very least, mobilize public opinion against what Thomas believes is an “anti-American” system of unequal justice.

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The proponents of the Arizona initiative will have a clear message which they say will not deviate depending on whether the audience is Hispanic students or African American businessmen or white government employees. Speaking of the need to eliminate race as a consideration for school admissions, Gratz says: “It is a matter of fairness. Everyone deserves to know if they are accepted or rejected based on their merit.” She says that minority students must live with the “stigma of race preference” as their peers doubt whether they were really admitted because of their personal achievements or whether it was their race which vaulted them over other better qualified candidates.

Bolick believes that Arizona’s large Hispanic population has good reason to support the ban. Bolick argues that “once you have explicit classifications by ethnicity” fuel is added to anti-immigrant sentiments. Moreover, Hispanics and all citizens should recognize, according to Bolick, that racial and ethnic preferences “rarely trickle down to people most in need.” Gratz agrees that by eliminating racial preferences Arizona universities and colleges, like their counterparts in California after Proposition 209, will be forced to concentrate on “socio-economic” hardship and first generation college status. As things stand now Gratz contends that “elites” view race preferences as a “blanket” solution for minorities in education, employment and contracting and think they “do not have to do much” to improve education and employment for minorities.

The truth is that equal protection, the heart of teh 14th Amendment which is often cited as a reason for racial preferences has been perverted to teh point of being unrecognizable. Good Luck to Bollick and Gratz.