Brown Presses His Case for Affirmative Action : Politics: In telling Democrats they have a moral obligation to defend the policy, the Speaker recalls racial prejudice he has encountered since early childhood.

SACRAMENTO — Recalling a boyhood filled with “colored” and “whites-only” drinking fountains and outdated textbooks discarded by white schools, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown on Monday said Democrats have a moral obligation to defend affirmative action programs against attacks by “mean-spirited” politicians.

Taking a highly personal stand on a social policy issue, Brown said race-based exclusion persists in American society and called affirmative action a “a small measure of simple and long-overdue justice” for minorities.

“It is the obligation of the Democratic Party to advocate for and protect the rights of all its constituencies--not stand by while others pit them against each other, or engage in such divisiveness ourselves,” said Brown, 61.

The Speaker’s remarks were contained in a 48-page report to fellow Assembly Democrats. Most unusual were his personal remembrances of racial discrimination, beginning with his childhood and continuing through an episode just two years ago.

For a boy growing up black in Mineola, Tex., Brown recalled, discrimination was so complete that it amounted to “social and economic ostracism.” In the black schools, the desks and textbooks were “used-up” rejects, and teachers earned only a fraction of the salaries paid their white counterparts.

At restaurants, Brown said, he was forced to enter through the back door, and he was flatly excluded from many parks and other public places.

“I learned with my first breaths that being black was a definite hardship,” Brown recalled, “and being white, a distinct advantage.”

Brown acknowledged that he was able to overcome such prejudice and succeed professionally without affirmative action programs. But many other African Americans, he noted, have not--”not because they lacked initiative, or talent, or intelligence, but because either too few opportunities were offered to them” or their backgrounds left them ill-equipped to seize opportunities that came their way.

Such a “tragic waste of lives and talent” is what affirmative action was created to prevent, Brown said.

In response to commentators who say America has become colorblind, Brown recounted his attempt to lease an apartment in an upscale San Francisco building two years ago.

When Brown telephoned to inquire about a vacancy advertised by the building’s leasing agency, he was told all the units were taken. Suspecting that was not the case, he sent a white employee from his law office to pose as a prospective tenant.

“Sure enough, she was able to rent one on the spot,” Brown said.

Brown sued the owners of the apartment building and won a “six-figure” settlement, said Darolyn Davis, an aide to the Speaker. Although he chose not to live there, Brown forced the owners to make clear in their advertisements that the premises are open to all.

Brown’s remarks came one day after he issued a spirited defense of affirmative action at the state Democratic Convention here, comments that stood in contrast to a less forceful defense of the program by President Clinton, who also spoke at the convention.

Brown has emerged as the Democrats’ most vociferous defender of affirmative action just as partisan foes are heating up with attacks against it.

A voter initiative expected to be on the November, 1996, ballot, dubbed the California civil rights initiative, would forbid preferential treatment based on race or sex in public hiring, contracting and student admissions. Polls show heavy support for the initiative.

Gov. Pete Wilson, in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, has called for abolishing such programs.