However, Connerly's wife, who is white, acknowledges that her husband's insistence that race is irrelevant is based on his lack of exposure to blatant racism, "I don't think he's had some of the devastating effects of discrimination that others have had" (Tharp, 1996, p. 22).
Some supporters of Proposition 209 favor abolishing affirmative action because the program has not been as effective as hoped. Affirmative action policy was established by Executive Order of the President about 30 years ago. Until recently it has not been put to significant public debate: "Affirmative action was a noble experiment, now intellectually and politically spent" (Krauthammer, 1996, p. 94).
One of the arguments against Proposition 209 was that the initiative focused on race to the exclusion of gender. In America, race is a divisive, emotional issue; and polit
...