Wilson Accuses Clinton of Racial Divisiveness

Taking up the call for a dialogue on race, Gov. Pete Wilson leveled a scathing attack on President Clinton on Saturday, accusing him of undermining equality through reverse discrimination.

Addressing an empathetic audience of radio talk show hosts in Century City, Wilson charged Clinton with fostering divisiveness by supporting affirmative action programs that undermine colorblind competition.

And he assailed the president for ignoring evidence of the country’s more open-minded attitude on racial matters, suggesting that Clinton harbors a fundamental lack of faith in the American people.

“President Clinton’s support of preferences, if it is in fact genuine and not simply pandering to an important political interest group, bespeaks a strange and unhealthy pessimism about Americans and America’s future,” Wilson said.

“He seems to lack confidence in the ability of minorities to make it without the crutch of preferences and to lack confidence in the capacity of the majority to treat their fellow Americans fairly.”

The governor’s remarks came one week after Clinton delivered a major address on race relations in a commencement speech at UC San Diego. In the address, Clinton defended affirmative action and urged Americans to contemplate the perennial question of why people of different skin colors and ethnic backgrounds cannot get along better.

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Wilson, among Clinton’s harshest critics, seemed to take the president’s speech in his hometown as almost a personal affront. His tone Saturday was alternately critical, contemptuous and at times condescending, as when he suggested that Clinton was “too bright to know” that affirmative action doesn’t work.

“If the legacy that Bill Clinton truly would leave is enhanced racial justice and harmony, it will require leadership. And to get leadership requires being honest with the American people,” Wilson said. “Instead, the president persists in fuzzing up a clear issue by pretending that it is possible to ‘mend, not end’ unconstitutional racial preferences.”

Wilson further accused Clinton of ignoring evidence that race relations are not as hostile as the president suggests. The governor cited recent public opinion surveys showing that white Americans have grown more amenable to supporting an African American presidential candidate, less opposed to interracial marriage, and far more willing than four decades ago to live next door to a black person.

“Four decades ago, Americans liked Ike. They loved Lucy. Golfers enlisted in Arnie’s Army,” the governor said. “Well, today we respect and salute a general named Colin Powell. We love Bill Cosby. We cheer Tiger Woods for the color of the green jacket he earned at Augusta.”

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The White House offered a studied response to Wilson’s remarks. “We are glad that political and community leaders around the country are answering the president’s call to join this important debate,” said spokesman Jon Murchinson. But, he went on, “if Governor Wilson thinks there is no discrimination based on race in America, that’s a point of view the president strongly disagrees with.”

Beyond his criticisms of Clinton, Wilson defended Propositions 187 and 209, the initiatives that would, respectively, cut off public aid to illegal immigrants and end state racial preferences. Implementation of both voter-approved measures is tied up in the courts.

Proposition 187 “was not the cause of divisiveness. It was the response to justifiable outrage caused by the federal failure in dealing with illegal immigration,” Wilson said. Similarly, Proposition 209 “was not the cause but the response and cure to divisiveness that was caused by the unfairness of preferences.”

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But the governor has many critics--including some fellow Republicans--who accuse him of exploiting the tensions underlying race and immigration for personal gains. His ardent support of Proposition 187 helped Wilson win reelection in 1994, and he made opposition to affirmative action a keystone of his failed 1996 presidential race.

Wilson responded to the criticism Saturday by attacking his attackers. Ignoring the charges of fellow Republicans, Wilson said that “liberals, including our president” consider a wedge, or divisive, issue any “that liberals don’t want to face and therefore don’t want to talk about.”

“Benign neglect is not the required response for wedge issues,” Wilson said, citing American independence, slavery, women’s suffrage and the Holocaust among examples of earlier “wedge issues.”

Wilson said the key is early intervention to expand children’s “access to opportunity.”

“We must assure first that every poor child comes to school healthy and able to concentrate,” Wilson said. “Second, we must assure that [schools] so challenge and motivate” children that they will graduate with the skills needed “to compete and win in this shrinking and fiercely competitive global marketplace.”

Toward that end, Wilson said, the state is expanding prenatal care for poor women, fighting out-of-wedlock pregnancies and reducing school class size in early grades.

Wilson declined an invitation to attend Clinton’s commencement address at UC San Diego. A spokesman said he chose to deliver his response before the National Association of Radio Talk Show Hosts because he anticipated a mostly conservative audience--and one that would disseminate his message.

The audience of about 150 people never applauded during Wilson’s address, but the reviews afterward appeared largely favorable.

“Wilson demonstrated he’s truly working toward a colorblind society,” said Brian Maloney, a host on Reno station KOH.

Daryl Gault of Santa Cruz’s KSCO said he hardly needed coaxing to take up the matter. “We’re constantly talking about race,” Gault said. “Talk radio has been way ahead of everybody.”