Barry Shapiro is hopping mad. “Are these, people fools, thugs, charlatans? he sputters. “These people” are the advocates of the California Civil Rights Initiative, the historic ballot proposition that would eliminate state- sponsored race and gender preferences in California, and they are threatening his job. Shapiro is a professional “diversity trainer,” and he has made a very good career out of affirmative action. “Teaching people about discrimination turns out to be surprisingly lucrative,” he admits.

Shapiro is not just complaining about the California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), however, he is fighting back. And he is joined in his efforts by a massive mobilization of the cultural elite, which has fanned out across the state in a vicious campaign to preserve California’s race and gender spoils system. The stakes are enormous. Not only do thousands of sinecures like Shapiro’s depend on affirmative action, but the elite’s very self-definition does as well. Race and gender preferences serve as daily proof of the moral inferiority of ordinary Americans, who allegedly need such correctives to counteract their indelible prejudices. But should CCRI pass, it will ignite a chain reaction that could bring down the entire national edifice of quotas and set-asides.