but I think this is the one he's talking about...
this is from a conservative website:
http://www.dailyobjectivist.com/Heroes/WardConnerly.aspWard Connerly
Ward Connerly is the man who accomplished the seeming impossible: a reversal of the entrenched pathological policy of "affirmative action"—another name for institutionalized racism in the name of racial equality. And he did it in the mushy-liberal state of California.
Connerly's success story began when then-Governor Pete Wilson, a friend, named him to the Board of Regents of the University of California. Until then Connerly had never questioned the policies of race-based preferences. "I accepted affirmative action as a part of the world in which I lived; a more or less invisible and certainly unchallengeable policy with a life of its own; the white noise of our everyday social transactions."
But, notes Linda Chavez in a review of Creating Equal: My Fight Against Racial Preferences, the regent's reaction "was based less on the abstract numbers in the Cook report than on the simple fact that the UC system denied admission to a deserving young man because of his skin color." He decided, without any angst or fretting, to put a stop to it—simply because it was the right thing to do.
First he convinced his fellow regents to ban racial preferences at UC. Then he headed up a ballot measure to end preferences throughout the state: the California Civil Rights Initiative (Proposition 209). After a nasty campaign in which Connerly was vilified as an "Uncle Tom," Prop 209 passed in 1996 with 54 percent of the vote. Two years later he successfully led an initiative in Washington state. In 2000 he's tackling the Florida ballot. Governor Jeb Bush, who has demonstrated some willingness to take on the education establishment (Florida passed the first state-wide voucher system, currently being challenged in court), says a ban of affirmative action would be too "divisive."
Says Connerly in his memoir: "Affirmative action was the kissing cousin of welfare, a seemingly humane social gesture that was actually quite diabolical in its consequences—not only causing racial conflict because of its inequities, but also validating blacks' fears of inferiority and reinforcing racial stereotypes."
Liberals, he says, have an unhealthy "need to believe that Rosa Parks is still stuck in the back of the bus, even though we live in a time when Oprah is on a billboard on the side of the bus."
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