Jackson Urges Students to Back Affirmative Action

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson passionately defended affirmative action in admission and hiring policies to students at UCLA on Friday, hoping to rekindle the activist spirit of the 1960s in a new generation of students.

Invoking images of Rosa Parks and students at campus sit-ins, Jackson compared today’s college students to the post-Civil War generation that permitted the passage of segregation laws in the 1890s.

“Somehow they’d become much too comfortable,” he said. “They lost their will to fight. Here we are in 1995, with our freedom and our hope up for debate and negotiation all over again.”

One University of California student leader at the rally pledged to organize a protest to prevent a vote at the Board of Regents’ July meeting in San Francisco, where the 18-member panel is scheduled to consider a proposal to dismantle the UC system’s race-based preference policies. Riot police broke up a crowd of protesters at the board’s May meeting.

Jackson, founder of the Rainbow Coalition, bemoaned what he viewed as a loss of energy in the civil rights movement over the past 30 years.

“There’s something fundamentally different about . . . this kind of Woodstock, ‘We can’t make it,’ cynical-withdrawal, choose-dope-over-hope syndrome,” he said. “Those who would dare be free, those who would dare make a difference, must have an ethic, a state of morality and a quality of courage that is higher than the cultural norm.”

He urged the boisterous and diverse crowd of about 400 students to march on the regents’ July meeting and pushed eligible students to register to vote.

Jackson, a two-time presidential candidate, said he has not decided whether to seek the presidency in 1996. Nonetheless, he lashed out at political figures across the ideological spectrum, but saved his most stinging criticism for Gov. Pete Wilson, who ordered state agencies to slash existing affirmative-action policies, and Regent Ward Connerly, who is spearheading the drive against race-based preferences in the UC system.

Citing the governor’s support for Proposition 187 and his later disclosure that he had once hired an illegal immigrant, Jackson said, “Wilson reminds me so much of a pancake. You know, he keeps flipping.”

After bringing forward students who had not registered to vote, he added: “This is how you send Wilson back to private life. We’re going to make him an undocumented governor.”

He called Connerly “strange fruit,” adding that he and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas are “affirmative action beneficiaries against their own opportunities.” Connerly, an African American, could not be reached for comment Friday.

He also lambasted President Clinton for failing to defend affirmative action, saying Clinton appeared to be more interested in public opinion than a moral stance on the issue.

Jackson attributed the recent backlash against race-based preferences to shifts in the U.S. job market and a lack of leadership. He dismissed the notion of the “angry white male,” saying, “America has been good to the white male.”

Students reacted favorably to Jackson’s address, saying his call to arms resonated with a generation that has been described as apathetic.

“We should’ve been picking up the slack a long time ago,” said Ed Gomez, a newly chosen student regent who was thrown out of the May meeting. “I think this generation will be responsible for the next 30 or 40 years.”

“He really shoved it in our face, saying, ‘You can do something,’ ” said Felicia Perez, a first-year student at UC Santa Barbara who registered to vote last week. “Voting is the biggest positive way to complain.”