Affirmative action foe Ward Connerly takes barbs at Truman State

KIRKSVILLE, Mo. (AP) -- Affirmative action foe Ward Connerly on Thursday brought his long-running campaign to Truman State University, where an overflow crowd alternately mocked and cheered his efforts in support of a November ballot initiative that would ban consideration of race in public hiring and college admissions.

The former University of California regent told an audience of several hundred students, professors and community members that the country's nearly 50-year effort to atone for past racial discrimination has run its course.

"What we're doing in our nation now ... is preparing for the day when race-based affirmative action won't be around," he said. "Clearly, it's living on borrowed time."

Connerly was a driving force behind California's successful 1996 ballot initiative banning consideration of race and gender in public hiring, contracting and school admissions. Washington state voters passed a similar law in 1998, as did Michigan voters in 2006.

Missouri is one of five states Connerly and his supporters are targeting as part of a continued effort to strike down affirmative action laws. Ballot initiatives are also being organized in Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma and Nebraska.

Connerly, who on Wednesday traveled to Jefferson City to build support among lawmakers for what is known as the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative, spoke for nearly two hours before a largely hostile audience that frequently jeered, interrupted and laughed at some of his more contentious statements.

He began his remarks by praising Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama for his recent Philadelphia speech on race relations, calling it "one of the most serious and reflective speeches by any public figure in my lifetime about the issue of race."

But what little goodwill Connerly earned from opponents in the crowd for crediting Obama quickly dissipated as the speaker, who is black, laid out his reasons for opposing affirmative action.

He acknowledged that eliminating or reducing scholarships for underrepresented minorities "will probably have a negative effect. But that's a public policy decision that has to be made."

He defended -- and reiterated -- previous comments in a National Public Radio interview asserting that integrated schools have largely damaged public education within the black community.

"Integration ought to be secondary to quality of education," he said. "When we broke up black schools ... we started eroding the quality of education."

Connerly drew his biggest applause of the night after briefly losing his composure responding to an audience member's interruption.

"Lady, would you please just shut up?" he said.

Supporters of the Missouri ballot initiative have until May 4 to collect roughly 150,000 signatures from registered voters across the state. Tim Asher, a former admissions director at North Central Missouri College who is leading the ballot effort, said supporters "are on pace" to meet that goal.

Jasmine Pampkin, a sophomore accounting major from St. Louis, said Connerly's vision of a race-blind society is an ideal that doesn't match her own reality. Pampkin, who is black, receives a $500 scholarship each semester from a campus multicultural affairs office, as well as an academic scholarship to help defray the estimated $11,000 annual costs of tuition, room and board at the liberal arts school.

"I would love to be able to be looked at just for my academic achievements," she said after Connerly's speech. "But I don't feel it's an equal playing field."

Event organizers said they were pleased to bring Connerly to campus, even if his overall reception was less than warm.

"We want to open up dialogue," said Courtney Robbins, a junior political science major from Lee's Summit and chairwoman of the campus College Republicans.

"Two wrongs don't make a right. You can't end discrimination with more discrimination. The best way to end racism is to not look at color at all."

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On the Web: Missouri Civil Rights Initiative, www.missouricri.org