"How do you sleep at night?" called out one spectator from the hostile audience crowded into the meeting room.
The comment didn't appear to bother Ward Connerly, the University of California regent who led the drive for a statewide ban on affirmative action programs in higher education, as he faced the Senate Government Operations Committee.
"There are programs that treat people differently on the basis of skin color," he told the committee. "That is discrimination."
Connerly testified as the Senate committee began considering a proposed constitutional amendment to prohibit discrimination and preferential treatment to anyone in employment, education and public contracting on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity, re
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| EMILY NATHAN/Daily Ward Connerly, a former regent at the University of California, speaks to a crowded Michigan League last night against the use of racial
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The legislation would exempt residency preferences and policies needed to protect federal funds and permit consideration of economic status not related to race, sex or other such factors. It also would allow education preferences designed to promote diversity as long as they were based on a person's skills.
The anti-affirmative action movement has taken off in California, where voters in 1996 approved a proposal forbidding state and local governments from discriminating against or granting preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin.
California Gov. Pete Wilson pushed the issue even further last week by formally ending enforcement of a California law giving preferences in state contracting to firms owned by minorities and women.
Connerly said he doesn't know if Michigan residents are as receptive to ending affirmative action as California voters have been.
If the response he got yesterday was any indication, the answer is no.
The heavily black audience taunted Connerly, who also is black. Connerly decried the "tactics of intimidation."
"Programs that treat people differently are hanging on by a thread," he said.
preferences.
03-19-98
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