The Minority-Majority Society (1996) Pete Wilson [Pete Wilson was Governor of California when he delivered this speech. He was a strong proponent a State Proposition 209 aimed at ending government preferences programs based on gender and race. The Proposition passed in a state-wide referendum in 1996.] As a nation, we face enormous challenges-and none greater than ensuring that all our citizens, regardless of race, religion, or gender, have an equal opportunity to pursue their dreams and realize their God-given potential. Every generation of Americans has wrestled with that challenge. But today in California, it has special urgency. We live in the most diverse society the world has ever known. In Los Angeles alone, our schools teach children who speak more than eighty different languages. Early in the next century, no single ethnic group will constitute a majority of California's population. We'll be the nation's first minority-majority state. So we don't need sermons about tolerance and diversity. We're practicing it every day. And California job creators have proven that our diversity gives us a sharp competitive edge in the global marketplace. But we can't ignore that diversity also poses serious challenges. For our state and nation to succeed and prosper, we must treat every citizen as an individual-acknowledging our differences, but cherishing above all else what unites us as Americans. Thomas Jefferson first described the American al more than two hundred years ago when he declared equal rights for all, special privileges for none." The pursuit of that ideal has been the key to American success since 1776. We fought a bloody civil war to defend it. And a hundred years later that ideal was the guiding force for the historic achievements the civil rights movement. But today, that fundamental American principle of equality is being eroded, eroded by a system of preferential treatment that awards public jobs, public contracts, and seats in our public universities, not based on merit and achievement but a membership in a group defined by race, ethnicity, or gender That's not right. It's not fair. It is, by definition, discrimination It's exactly what the civil rights movement sought to end. AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CAN NO LONGER BE JUSTIFIED Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s inspiring dream of a nation where our children are judged not "by the color of their ski but by the content of their character" remains the single best vision of what our goal should be. And that was the origin goal of affirmative action. When President John Kennedy coined the phrase "affirmative action," he issued an executive order that directed employers to hire workers "without regard race, creed, color or national origin." But our nation soon changed course. The federal government launched programs, that, rather than disregarding race, magnified it. First, through goals and timetables, then with set-asides and sometimes out-right quotas, they encouraged preferential treatment for members of the groups that suffered discrimination. President Lyndon Johnson compared the effort to a footrace in which runners who'd once been shackled were now given the inside track to keep up with the other runners. This appealed to our fundamental sense of fairness. It was base however, on the assumption that we would achieve equality mandating inequality-that we could combat discrimination against one group by discriminating against another. But, course, we can't. And whatever justification existed for thisWilson, Minority-Majority Society 2system in the 1960s and 1970s isn't there more than thirty years after the civil rights movement succeeded in outlawing discrimination. Don't get me wrong: the fight against racism hasn't entirely been won. But the demagogues who compare California of the 1990s to Selma, Alabama, of the 1960s are lost in a time warp. The chief of police in Los Angeles isn't Bull Conner-it's Willie Williams, an African-American. Our state capitol's most enduring figure hasn't been George Wallace-it's been Willie Brown, an African-American. And the people from Washington telling us what to do aren't the FBI coming to enforce the law. They're the Rainbow Coalition coming to disrupt it. Let me be very clear: we haven't yet fully achieved Martin Luther King's dream of a color-blind society. Discrimination still occurs, and we must aggressively and conscientiously enforce our civil rights laws which prohibit discrimination. But we won't achieve that dream until we also end the system of preferential treatment that, in fact, judges people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character. Defenders of the status quo charge that efforts to end unfair preferential treatment will roll back the clock on civil rights. That is a tortured and deliberate distortion. In fact, just the opposite is true. By outlawing all types of discrimination, we'll strengthen the goal of civil rights, which I strongly sup port. We must condemn bigotry whenever it raises its ugly head. As governor I've repeatedly signed legislation to toughen civil rights protections and asked the legislature for more re sources to investigate and prosecute discrimination. Other defenders of affirmative action say we don't need to end preferential treatment, because it only expands opportunity; it never limits it. There are no victims of reverse discrimination, they say. Well, tell that to Janice Camarena. She's a widowed mother of three young children who signed up for an English 101 class at San Bernardino Valley College, only to be told that she couldn't be in the class she wanted because it was reserved for African American students only. Or tell it to the employees of Fontana Steel in California. Almost half of them are minorities, but the firm doesn't qualify as a minority contractor. As a result, they've lost contracts, even when they were the low bidder, to firms that were given preferential treatment. Fontana Steel was prevented from even bidding on a $19 million contract to work on a bridge for the CALTRAN subway system because the contract was reserved for a minority firm. The apologists for racial and gender preferences claim that it's only "angry white men" who oppose preferential treatment-that this is a backlash against the success of minorities and women in modern America. Well, they're misreading America. Americans are as proud as they can be of high-achieving individuals of every race, creed, and gender.