He questioned the “minorities” segregated by “color” — (the “non-white,” & sometimes non-Asian “races”) — the fostered, conventional view these are crippled, defective “subspecies” incapable of getting by except collectively; and with sponsoring government supervision and preferences, at that.

He had success with Proposition 209 (1996), weaning California women and “minorities” off this whining, circular, self-immolating dependency on preferences. (Btw: California is all “minority”; “whites” now below 50%.) Connerly enjoyed influence that reached into a few other states, their also ending “race”-based state affirmative action. Liberated peoples (Californians & more) with melanin in their skins turned out not helpless victims after all. Honors earned in these no-preference states will go untainted with the suggestion of “color”-cronyism that still fogs personal achievements in the rest of the nation. (I.e., scrutinizing all persons not labeled “white” or Asian.)

He fought state invasion of racial privacy by its compulsory classification of individual’s alleged “race-difference” — this was Mr. Connerly’s unsuccessful California Proposition 54 (2003). “White racism” clearly did not materialize against Prop. 54. But the still furious anti-Prop. 209 preference lobby mobilized for government invasion of privacy, and for compulsory individual “races.” They argued everything imaginable. Probably, the anti-privacy compulsory “races” campaign gained ground mostly by stirring up racial-health medical hysteria, as if “colored” folk will die in droves without government classifying their “bio-type” on loan applications, on every irrelevant, public paperwork. All the same bogus medical “reasons” can abolish anyone’s privacy, demanding individual “data” on sexual orientation, religious belief — on any privacy that might have a “medical” angle.

Before departing the Board of Regents of the University of California, Mr. Connerly tried unsuccessfully to establish a multiracial category for U.C. students. This might helpfully synthesize the “Mark [x] one or more races” philosophy and mandate of the Joint Congressional Committee on the Census, and the OMB (1997), commencing with census 2000. Again the preference lobby made war on Connerly’s proposal, and personally attacked him. “Multiracial” threatened their agenda by offering an honorable, true, way for anyone to decline to reveal private self-and-family “taxonomy.” Multiracial would remove the stigma the post-2000 regime [x]-marks on “half-breeds,” “hybrids,” on “mongrels,” calling for their public self-display. But for government classifying individuals in “different races” (that Mr. Connerly’s Prop. 54 tried to stop) there would be no cause for “pures” in caste-free society for its appalled media to ogle at “mixes.”

Again, what did Ward Connerly do wrong?