Rating: 
Summary: A fascinating human interest story
Review: Judging from the title of this book, I thought it was a political book, or another book about race and affirmative action. But, it is not that at all. It is a story about a young boy born into difficult circumstances who learns that "it is not the life you are given, but the life you make of the life you are given, that counts." This is a book that will make you a better person, a better parent, and a better American--regardless of your race, gender or ethnic background. The experiences Ward Connerly has had in his life are truly heart-wrenching and make you want to reach out and touch him. This book is destined to become a classic.
Rating:
Summary: Its your heart and mind, not your color.
Review: Mr. Connerly blasts through all the myths and ledgends of the "civil rights professionals" and their assertions that without affirmitive action, in its present form, blacks will be cast into an abyss from which they will never recover. That logic, Mr. Connerly contends, has helped to cause the problems in the black community for the past 30 years and will persist until common sense action is taken. He proves, through this wonderful autobiography and social treatise, that no person needs government "booster points" to become succesful; all that is needed is a stable family and a character that never gives up.
Rating:
Summary: A gentleman to admire.
Review: Mr. Connerly could very easily have gone on with his life and avoided all the heart-break and venom hurled his way by those advocating "racial preferences". This gentleman must have felt like "Daniel" taking on the lions. His gift to all in this country is setting us on a future filled with competition and success for all. Thank you sir for a an assignment well done.
Rating: 
Summary: Negative Fifty Trillion stars.
Review: Of all the dreadful books I've read in my life time, this one ranks in the top 3. If this guy got his way, Black People would return to the days of kissing the boots of whites and proclaiming "Yes, Master". If you want to know what self-hatred is, this guy defines it.He conveniently dismisses the 300 Years of "White Preferences" that existed, and he ignores REAL FACTS, like how Hundreds of studies show discrimination against people of color in different areas of everyday life, whether subliminally, or being lied to about a vacant apartment. A full-time black male worker in 2003 makes less in real dollar terms than similar white men were earning in 1967, and White families, on average, have a net worth that is 11 times the net worth of black families. I could go on, but you get the point. "Creating Equal" just proves how disengaged from Black America Ward Connerly is to have such views to begin with. Thank Heavens many rational, level-headed people of all races reject this guy.
Rating:
Summary: CREATING EQUAL Creates Second Thoughts
Review: Over my life course, I have read many books on race relations, social justice, and social inequality. Ward Connerly book's CREATING EQUAL: MY FIGHT AGAINST RACE PREFERENCES will be one of the most memorable. Why? Ward Connerly does not take the popular position. Readers do not have to like him or his ideas to realize that Connerly is a man a great courage. He is well known and even hated for his position on affirmative action. However, reading his elegant words within CREATING EQUAL creates second thoughts among those who are strongly opposed to his ideology. Connerly lays out how his upbringing drove him to believe that Affirmative Action does more damage than good. Most of his logical positions are solid well thought out and have a great deal of merit. Nevertheless, we can find flaws in his position. I have actually required CREATING EQUAL to be read by social work majors who are strongly in favor of affirmative action. After reading this book, ALL of them changed their position. This is not to say that all of them started to oppose affirmative action, but clearly, their positions in favor of affirmative action were softened. Reading CREATING EQUAL creates second thoughts. To induce students to use their critical thinking skills, I often require them to read A HOPE IN THE UNSEEN immediately after reading CREATING EQUAL. Suskind, the author of A HOPE IN THE UNSEEN, chronicles the life of an African American young man's struggle to gain an education. Cedric Jennings' life provides the strongest argument for affirmative action. It is utterly fascinating to witness students synthesizing the content of these two well-written books. So, I recommend that everyone read both books - one immediately following the other.
Rating:
Summary: CREATING EQUAL Creates Second Thoughts
Review: Over my life course, I have read many books on race relations, social justice, and social inequality. Ward Connerly book's CREATING EQUAL: MY FIGHT AGAINST RACE PREFERENCES will be one of the most memorable. Why? Ward Connerly does not take the popular position. Readers do not have to like him or his ideas to realize that Connerly is a man a great courage. He is well known and even hated for his position on affirmative action. However, reading his elegant words within CREATING EQUAL creates second thoughts among those who are strongly opposed to his ideology. Connerly lays out how his upbringing drove him to believe that Affirmative Action does more damage than good. Most of his logical positions are solid well thought out and have a great deal of merit. Nevertheless, we can find flaws in his position. I have actually required CREATING EQUAL to be read by social work majors who are strongly in favor of affirmative action. After reading this book, ALL of them changed their position. This is not to say that all of them started to oppose affirmative action, but clearly, their positions in favor of affirmative action were softened. Reading CREATING EQUAL creates second thoughts. To induce students to use their critical thinking skills, I often require them to read A HOPE IN THE UNSEEN immediately after reading CREATING EQUAL. Suskind, the author of A HOPE IN THE UNSEEN, chronicles the life of an African American young man's struggle to gain an education. Cedric Jennings' life provides the strongest argument for affirmative action. It is utterly fascinating to witness students synthesizing the content of these two well-written books. So, I recommend that everyone read both books - one immediately following the other.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: The title of this book is does not begin to do it justice. It is not dry. It is not a rhetorical polemic. The book focuses on real world experiences and what Mr. Connerly and ultimately the reader can learn from them. I was moved by many of the stories contained within. But Mr. Connerly's book is more than just stories. It is thoughtful, well written and convincing. I couldn't put it down.
Rating:
Summary: Moving, thoughtful and ultimately fascinating
Review: The title of this book, "Creating Equal" (which sounds like a sociology text), does not begin to do the book justice. Easy to read, jargon free and never boring, Connerly's book nevertheless conveys important truths about our current human condition through his personal, real life experiences. I highly recommend the book to all.
Rating:
Summary: Autobiography in the great American tradition
Review: There was a time when public figures with significant views on the great issues of the day would write pamphlets or treatises, even short books, detailing their positions. One thinks, for instance, of such writers as Thomas Paine and Alexander Hamilton at the time of the Founding, or in recent decades of Barry Goldwater's great book The Conscience of a Conservative, or William Simon's A Time for Truth. These are all polemical works, meant to argue for political positions, which, though intensely personal, are uncluttered by personality. They served an essential public service by addressing vital questions in a brief and readable form. As a result, they were widely read and quite influential. Today, at a time when even White House pets have bestselling memoirs, these kinds of arguments are now grafted on to autobiographical texts for no discernible reason other than to exploit the current trend in publishing. It was with some trepidation then that I approached Ward Connerly's book, Creating Equal. I admire him and the battle he has waged over the past decade, but I honestly expected to skim through the typically pro forma story of his life to get to the meatier sections where he would present the intellectual case against racial preference programs. But an unexpected thing happened on the way through the boring bits; it turns out that, though much of his tale is familiar, Ward Connerly's own life experience is one of his best arguments. As is common in American society, and only getting more so, Connerly comes of mixed racial stock : Black, White, and Native American. He is "Black" only by the terms of the ancient and racist "one drop rule" and by family tradition; in reality his race defies categorization. He did not meet his father until very late in life and, his mother having died, was raised first by an aunt and uncle, then by his grandmother. His grandmother and uncle were the real formative influences on his character, both of them strict and demanding that he make something of himself. His Uncle James in particular was a role model, asking only one thing of life : that people treat him like a man; in exchange always carrying himself like one. Together they instilled in Connerly a burning desire to be judged on his own merit. It thus seems natural that when, as a member of the University of California Board of Regents, Connerly was approached by a couple who had statistical evidence of the use of quotas by the UC colleges, he turned their cause into his cause. His account of the battle for Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative, and then subsequent contests in Washington, Texas and Florida, make for interesting reading, though they are perhaps not as viscerally powerful as the story of his early life. Throughout the book, Connerly is animated by a simple timeless creed which gives the book its title : I celebrated July 4 1995 with a heightened awareness of the personal freedom at the core of nationhood. When the Founding Fathers said that we were all created equal, they were proposing an audacious theory that ultimately inflamed the rest of the world. By fits and starts, Americans had tried to make that theory into a reality, with abolitionism, the Emancipation Proclamation, and, of course, the civil rights movement, which instituted sweeping revisions of the law that have brought us ever closer to the fulfillment of the promise of our national life. I felt in my heart that race preferences--by whatever name--were not a continuation of that progress, but an obstacle in the road to freedom and equality. At best a diversion, and at worst a giant step backward, affirmative action preferences caused us to lose sight of the task we inherited from the Founders--creating equal as the only category that counts in America. There's a deep irony in the fact that these beliefs, traceable to Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, should now make Ward Connerly anathema to the Democratic Party and to the institutionalized civil rights movement. We have reached a sad point in our nation's history where to the inheritors of the legacy of Jefferson and King the idea of a color blind society has been transmuted into a weird kind of racism itself. It should not have required courage to, as Connerly boldly does, advocate that race be ignored in awarding government jobs and contracts, but it did, and this demonstration of courage makes Connerly into a heroic figure, willing to brave epithets, threats and hatreds to vindicate his convictions. This memoir, harkening back to The Autobiography of Ben Franklin and Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery, partakes of the great American tradition of self-reliance and the demand that each of us be judged individually; this gives it an impact all out of proportion to what I expected. GRADE : A
Rating: 
Summary: Idealism reads nicely...
Review: There's no denying that "Creating Equal" is a well written, easy read. I have enjoyed reading about Connerly's life as well as his opinions on affirmative action, even though i disagree with them. "Creating Equal" has given me a different perspective on the affirmative action issue, but has failed to change my opinion that affirmative action is a necessary policy at this moment in time. Connerly basis his argument on America's goal of becoming a "color blind" society. Unfortunately, Connerly's ideal is far from a reality even as far away as we are from the Civil Rights Movement. While he describes beautiful images of racial differences being nonexistant, the reality of this is not the society that we live in today. There HAVE been significant advances for racial minorities since the Civil Rights Movement, but race is still a key divider in American society. One cannot look at the economic divide in the United States without noting that the general trends show a significant difference in household income between blacks and Latinos, and whites and Asians. Even looking at the "middle class" income bracket, one can see that middle class blacks and Latinos make significantly less than middle class whites and Asians. With more wealth comes a greater access to better education, which in turn creates greater opportunity for advanced education and better jobs, etc. The problem that should be attacked to create equality is the public school system. Thankfully, Connerly acknowledges that the real problem is the public educational system, however, he offers no solution. Erasing affirmative action without simultaneously pushing for reforms in the distribution of funding in public education as well as other improvements offers no solution to those who are truly underserved. I recommend "Creating Equal" to proponents and opponents of affirmative action. While I feel that Connerly is striving to achieve his goal of a color blind society in backwards manner, he does bring into question some important flaws in the affirmative action system as it exists, which can perhaps lead us to a better model to use while we still need it.
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