President Joe Biden’s pledge to fill the Supreme Court vacancy with a black woman suggests that his mindset is still in the 1960s, according to Ward Connerly, a civil rights leader and prominent opponent of affirmative action. Connerly, who is black, served as regent of University of California when he led the effort that banned affirmative action in California in 1996. He successfully defended his legacy in 2020 by defeating Proposition 16, a measure would have allowed public agencies in California to make hiring, contracting, and student admission decisions based on race or gender. In an interview with NTD News, Connerly said affirmative action was originally meant to change a discriminatory culture in which people were forced to stay “outside the mainstream of American life” solely because of their skin color. When President John F. Kennedy first championed affirmative action, according to Connerly, it was a temporary measure to accelerate …