Under Every Rock, Agents of Diversity

His critics on the 26-member University of California Board of Regents have cooked up a new nickname for Ward Connerly. They call him No. 26. This is in reference to the latest hand grenade lobbed up by Connerly in his crusade against campus integration.

From henceforth, Connerly suggested last week, applicants to the UC system no longer should petition by name. Rather, they should be given secret numbers. Only this, he explained, will prevent a “Jamal” or a “Pablo” or a “Suzie Wong”--his terminology--from receiving race-based attention in the admissions process.

There are too many practical problems with this approach to list. For example, as a UCLA admissions director noted, personal essays are part of the application package: “Are we going to take black ink, or white ink, to blot out the student’s affiliation with the Black Student Union or that they founded the Vietnamese club at high school? If a person writes, ‘I’m the captain of the football team,’ are we to take that out because it gives us an indication of gender or race?”

However silly Connerly’s nameless student body might seem, the proposal is sobering all the same. It demonstrates that he is not going away soon, and there is nothing funny about that. Connerly has made himself into the Joe McCarthy of race relations in California. He is convinced that under every rock of academia lurks a sinister bureaucrat conspiring to sneak a minority student onto campus. And he is out to defeat them.

“The university says trust us,” Connerly told reporters last week. “My response is, ‘Why?’ ”

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Why? The question can be applied to Connerly. “I have no idea what motivates him,” said Roy Brophy, a fellow regent. When Connerly first started challenging university admissions policies, the popular analysis was that he was carrying water for his self-described father figure, Gov. Pete Wilson. This was two years ago, when Wilson was preparing to run for president on the racy issues of immigration and affirmative action.

Now Wilson is stuck in Sacramento, a lame duck laboring to shore up his legacy. It seems doubtful that he wants to go down as some latter-day Orval Faubus. Still, Connerly persists, banging away against integration programs like that everlasting battery bunny. Some critics contend Connerly simply has fallen in love with headlines.

“The only way to stop him,” said Richard Russell, a regent who has clashed often with Connerly, “is for you guys to stop writing about him.”

Here is a wealthy but obscure businessman--Connerly made his money advising local governments on how to implement a housing bill he helped formulate as a legislative aide--who exploded into one of the most quoted public figures in California. In almost every interview, Connerly will bemoan the burden of public exposure, and then move on to the next microphone. Lately he has begun to announce at every opportunity his disinterest in elected office; Connerly has volunteered this denial so often that it has started to sound suspiciously like a political trial balloon. No doubt, U.S. Sen. Connerly sounds just fine to him.

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And yet ambition alone cannot explain Connerly’s behavior. His quest seems far too personal, infected with a deep anger that rages free every time someone dares to challenge him. Some African Americans have noted Connerly’s skin color, which is black. They wonder aloud why someone who once qualified as a minority contractor would fight so hard against a tool of integration; they question, quite frankly, if he is comfortable in his own skin.

For his part, Connerly points to the strains of Irish and Choctaw blood, along with that of blacks, in his ancestral family: “It is difficult for me to think ‘black,’ ” he told the Sacramento Bee, “as a lot of people expect me too.” At the same time, he frequently compares his work to that of Martin Luther King Jr. A complicated man, this Wardell Anthony Connerly.

What drives Connerly ultimately must remain a mystery of his own heart. What has become clear, however, is the toll his crusade is taking on the reputation of both the university and California at large. Applications from minorities are declining in excess of national trends. Recruiters for black universities have flocked to California, making the obvious pitch: Why go where you are not wanted? The golden land of tolerance has begun to look quite a little bit like Dixie.

How it all will end for Connerly is not difficult to imagine. Joe McCarthy, it was said at his fall, was banished mainly “for being a bully and a boor.” Connerly’s act, too, will grow old. He will lob one grenade too many, or push the wrong someone with the political moxie to push back harder. That’s how it goes with bullies. The essential question is how much damage will he create in the meantime?