One young woman asked whether his efforts are funded by the Ku Klux Klan.
This woman is a winner. She'll go far in a Dem administration. Prolly wind up at the State Dept.
Posted on 02/27/2008 8:07:11 AM PST by stan_sipple
Tough, tough crowd.
Ward Connerly, the California businessman behind a movement to end race- and gender-based affirmative action in Nebraska, faced jeers and interruptions Tuesday evening as he defended his position on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus.
About 200 listeners, mostly students, drilled Connerly with questions about his motives, beliefs and even his salary.
One young woman asked whether his efforts are funded by the Ku Klux Klan.
“No,” Connerly said. Then he added: “What a stupid question,” drawing boos.
Connerly leads the California-based Super Tuesday for Equal Rights, which seeks to end racial and gender preferences in hiring and admissions decisions at state institutions. The group already has been successful in California, Michigan and Washington, and it is targeting five states, Nebraska included, this year.
The group’s allies need to gather 115,000 petition signatures by July 4 to place a constitutional ban on affirmative action before Nebraska voters in November.
Connerly is confident they will.
“This is a side that’s going to prevail,” he said.
But many from the university community say they’re ready for a battle.
NU regents already have voted to oppose an affirmative-action ban, and university leaders have said a ban would hurt efforts to diversify their campuses.
They also fear a ban would send a message to potential recruits that Nebraska doesn’t care about diversity.
Tuesday, students showed up to the Nebraska Union Ballroom bearing tags that read, “Decline to Sign.”
Gaps in academic performances between racial groups show affirmative action still is necessary, they said. And mostly white UNL still needs programs and scholarships geared toward minorities to bring more nonwhite faces to classrooms.
“I hope in the future it isn’t necessary,” said Josh Lopez, a freshman secondary math education major from El Paso, Texas. “But there are still big discrepancies.”
Lopez is a leader of Students United for Nebraska, a coalition of UNL students mounting an opposition to the Connerly initiative.
The group aims to educate the public on what affirmative action means at UNL, said Sherman McCain, a sophomore psychology major from Omaha.
For example, affirmative action isn’t always about race, McCain said — it could help get men into nursing, or women into engineering.
“It evens the playing field,” he said. “We’re going to try to fight this (initiative) out.”
After Connerly delivered a brief opening statement, audience members lined up behind a microphone, sometimes firing off multiple questions before being asked to sit down.
Two asked for his salary ($300,000). One asked whether he’d read Shelby Steele’s “White Guilt” (yes). Some claimed the language on the petition initiative leaves out the words “affirmative action” to intentionally confuse voters (he denied that).
Several demanded to know why he came from his home state to change Nebraska law.
He wouldn’t change the law, he said. Voters would.
As taxpayers, Americans should want to be treated equally by the government, Connerly said.
That means no preferences to certain racial or gender groups, he said.
Pointing to the presidential candidacy of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, Connerly said he believes the country is ready to move past racial divides.
“To me, it says the American people yearn to get beyond race.”
Gotta love him for being direct.
thats about all these dumba** kids would know from their “history” classes
“Gaps in academic performances between racial groups show affirmative action still is necessary, they said. And mostly white UNL still needs programs and scholarships geared toward minorities to bring more nonwhite faces to classrooms.”
Um .... this is Nebraska, how many non-whites can there possibly be?
That is what he really meant to say.
You mean “revisionist history” classes.
according to the educrat liberals the fewer there are, the greater the need for special preferences
Ward Connerly is a very brave man.
I find myself asking that very same question, with the same results.......silence.
I think the Ann Coulter approach is the correct one. When these people say stupid things you have to ridicule them. Perhaps we can embarrass them into making sense (or at least hiding their idiocy).
And then they have the audacity to insist that I only made it in my field because of my skin color and outdoor plumbing. What fools.
Interesting question.
when UNL chancellor Harvey Perlman was dean of the law school he segregated the minorities into their own class sections, so they could benefit from the whites’ higher average grades
“Ward Connerly is a very brave man.”
I love black conservatives. It shows courage and character.
Indeed.
Try it out sometime. It's neat to watch the wheels turn in their head.
Lincoln Nebraska is a junior University of Texas Austin wannabe.
Lots of students and professors wearing Sandipper shoes, Ice creme Britches and Lenin glasses.
Looks like the 70’s are just now catching up to Lincoln.
LOL. And the smoke pouring from their ears.
One young woman asked whether his efforts are funded by the Ku Klux Klan.
This woman is a winner. She'll go far in a Dem administration. Prolly wind up at the State Dept.
she’ll be working next to the obama volunteers who put che guevara posters on their office walls
While there are certainly liberals at UT, I spent my four years there, and never once had a professor try to indoctrinate me politically.
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