Clinton Soothes Biggest Critics On Racial Issues Opponents Of Affirmative Action Get Their Say At White House

Affirmative action opponents said they deserved to be heard and President Clinton Friday gave them their chance. When it was all over - after 90 minutes of cordial and occasionally pointed conversation - some of Clinton’s most caustic critics came out cooing.

A group including several of the nation’s most prominent foes of racial preference programs - including University of California regent Ward Connerly, Rep. Charles T. Canady, R-Fla., and Linda Chavez, head of the Civil Rights Commission under President Ronald Reagan - emerged from the White House lavishing praise on Clinton for what they called his keen insight into racial problems and the respectful understanding he had shown for their views.

For a moment, it seemed like one of the most divisive issues in American life had melted away. Affirmative action opponents have accused Clinton of advocating quotas that divide Americans by race. Clinton has accused affirmative action opponents of being content to resegregate America. Friday both sides chose to give the other the benefit of the doubt.

“I must confess to you that I came today with a certain amount of cynicism,” said Connerly, who led the effort to repeal California’s affirmative action programs in higher education. “But I must tell you that the president made a believer out of me, that he is of good will.”

Connerly allowed that it was possible he had been beguiled by Clinton’s famous gift for empathy. And, White House advisers made clear that while Clinton had found his conversation with the conservatives stimulating, he had not reversed his support for affirmative action.

The reality is that both sides had - at least for the afternoon - a strong mutual interest in getting along. Clinton was able to answer criticism that what he calls his “national conversation on race” was really a choir in which dissenting voices are not welcome.

The conservatives, for their part, said the meeting was an important validation. So far, the loudest anti-affirmative action message heard by Clinton’s commission to study race relations had been a David Duke supporter who showed up at a meeting in Virginia this week shouting about how white people were suffering because of special treatment for minorities. Clinton’s invitation Friday, several of the conservatives said, helped show that their views are mainstream, and that to be opposed to affirmative action programs did not mean they are racists or unconcerned about the plight of minorities.

Author Abigail Thernstrom, who with her husband recently wrote a book arguing against affirmative action, said Clinton’s message was: “The position you have, though you may disagree with me, has moral and intellectual legitimacy.”

White House press secretary Michael McCurry agreed this is Clinton’s view. If so, it is not shared by all of his team. Harvard Law Professor Chris Edley Jr., a White House consultant to the race initiative, called Thernstrom’s book a “crime against humanity.”

Although the session was closed to reporters, the White House released a transcript. Clinton spent much of the time playing the devil’s advocate. Rather than articulating his support for affirmative action, he repeatedly challenged opponents about what they would offer as an alternative to existing programs.

“Let’s assume we abolished them all tomorrow and we just had to start over, what would you do?”

Connerly said he favors school choice programs that give disadvantaged youths a way of escaping from inferior schools. Chavez said she favors giving special attention to people who are the first-generation in their families to go to college, so long as these breaks are not dispensed on the basis of race.

She noted that many minorities are made to feel inferior because it is assumed they got their positions because of affirmative action. Stephan Thernstrom said he chafed at a recent “town meeting” Clinton held on race in Akron, Ohio, in which minorities talked about indignities they had experienced because of race - such as being stopped by police - but no one to challenged them by saying “‘Hey, are you sure it was racism; maybe it was X,Y, or Z.”’

At times, Clinton seemed to be purposely goading his guests. Pointing out that many drugs are brought across the border, he wondered whether the conservatives felt so strongly about color-blind policies that they wouldn’t allow police to devote special attention to Hispanics. “If you were running a police force … and you couldn’t stop every car, which cars would you stop.”

But no one took the bait. None of the affirmative action foes said they agreed that it was acceptable for police to target any racial group.

Canady said that while he was pleased by the session and predicted it would “delegitimize the demonizers” and lead to a more civil debate, it had not persuaded him to change or postpone his legislation.