David Duke: Notes On a Debate Card

Of course David Duke did not come dressed in sheets. Of course he did not burn crosses on the Cal State Northridge campus. They’re always more clever than that. He wore a dark suit, a bright red tie and his best winning smile. He quoted Shakespeare and recited many of the same gentle, if disingenuous, arguments for ending affirmative action put forward by proponents of Proposition 209.

It was about “fairness,” Duke said. Preferences were by definition a form of discrimination, and discrimination in any form is deplorable. Public safety demands that merit be the only qualification in hiring police officers and firefighters. The debt of history has been paid; it’s time to move forward.

David Duke, in fact, looked and sounded not at all unlike the patron of Prop. 209, Gov. Pete Wilson--with one notable exception. Duke himself was more than eager to point it out. “Wilson,” he said with contempt, “and most of the so-called Republican establishment are afraid to even use the word ‘white people.’ ” They cloak their arguments in what he called “fine words.” They talk around the heart of the matter.

And that’s when the sheets came on.

*

Duke has been reading my mail, it occurred to me as the debate heated up. He has tapped into my telephone service. As he made his own bent case against affirmative action, I closed my eyes and could hear echoes of the many angry letters and answering machine soliloquies I receive from white men who have found in Prop. 209 a vehicle for their frustration.

“What’s wrong,” they ask bluntly, if often anonymously, “with white people sticking up for white people?”

They speak of being “fed up,” of things simply having gone “too far” in the realm of race relations. Almost invariably, they link Prop. 209 to the O.J. Simpson verdict, as if the jury represented the end game of affirmative action. They wrap in immigration--to them another sign of the decline of the American ideal--and lament the “political correctness” they believe has muzzled them.

Duke came to Northridge decidedly unmuzzled. He brought a warning for “white people.” They were becoming “second-class citizens” in, as he put it, their own country: “You have a right to have your children live in a nation that reflects the values of their forefathers, not become more like Mexico, or Haiti, or Zimbabwe. . . . That is where we are headed, and that is what affirmative action is all about.”

At this bilge, most of the students began to hiss. Duke seemed undaunted. He was not speaking to the students. He was speaking to the television cameras. He was speaking to all those anonymous correspondents and callers out there who believe that “white people” are the ones getting the raw deal in America these days. He was reminding them that this is what Prop. 209 really “is all about.” In his view. In their view.

*

Now, the invitation of Duke was a source of great controversy. Wilson and Ward Connerly, chairman of the Prop. 209 campaign, saw it as a political setup, an attempt to lay a guilt-trip-by-association on those who would support Prop. 209. Their opponents no doubt worked to exploit Duke’s appearance, to make wobblers on the issue ask the question: If Duke is for this thing, then why am I?

It’s possible, however, that as a strategy, Duke’s presence could prove to have been too clever. Surely a portion of Prop. 209 supporters has bought honestly into the argument that affirmative action has outlived its purpose, that it has become unnecessarily divisive. Duke’s appearance could only inflame this constituency: Nobody wants to be accused of keeping company with bigots.

At the same time, Duke, without question, does represent the views of those who would eliminate affirmative action to strike a blow for “white people.” How many of these are there? It can’t be said. These are not people who open their hearts to pollsters. They can, however, vote--and their votes will count the same as everybody else. And, Duke’s appearance also worked to rally and reinforce this part of the Prop. 209 base, to quell any confusion that might be created by those soft, pro-Prop. 209 commercials about Martin Luther King and civil rights and all that.

Still, it wasn’t a total loss for the opposition. Perhaps the strongest argument against the initiative is that it simply is too early to abandon the struggle for civil rights, that now is not the time to start dismantling the few, flimsy ladders America has managed to stretch across the racial divide. The demons of racism might be on the run, but the exorcism is hardly complete. A point David Duke, by his mere presence, made abundantly clear.