One of the means that BAMN (By Any Means Necessary) uses to fight efforts to end racial preferences is to lie about what such efforts involve.
A good example is a flyer it has published on its web site and distributed to its mailing lists calling on supporters to picket the Michigan Court of Appeals today (June 8) when it considers the appeal of a lower court ruling invalidating the petitions being circulated by Ward Connerly’s Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, a proposal modeled on California’s Proposition 209 that would ban preferences based on race.
Thus it calls the MCRI “pro-segregation”; says that Connerly’s followers are “segregationist”; and claims that the MCRI is “aimed to ban all affirmative action and integration measures in Michigan.”
Claiming that a ban against discriminating on the basis of race is intended to, or would, ban all integration measures is of course absurd, as is the claim that those of us who favor such a ban are segregationists. The claim that MCRI would ban all affirmative action measures is more interesting, however, since it seems to assert something that most of us anti-preferentialists do not, namely, that all affirmative action involves racial preference.
“The claim that MCRI would ban all affirmative action measures is more interesting, however, since it seems to assert something that most of us anti-preferentialists do not, namely, that all affirmative action involves racial preference.”
You mean it does not?
When it’s not quotas in fact that is.
Rich
Affirmative Action was defined in the two presidential executive orders implementing it, by Kennedy and Johnson, as taking affirmative steps to insure that no one was discriminated against because of race. Even after that understanding bit the dust, some AA programs involve aggressive recruiting to see that a net is cast over the largest reasonable pool of applicants. That does not require preferential hiring or admissions. Many valuable affirmative action efforts, in short, could easily survive a strong ban on racial preferences.
“Affirmative Action was defined in the two presidential executive orders implementing it, by Kennedy and Johnson, as taking affirmative steps to insure that no one was discriminated against because of race.”
That’s the PR theory yes, but AA immediately turned into quotas, showing it’s real purpose, which was not to prevent discrimination, but to create it. That’s the ‘affirmative’ part of AA. It is and always has been Affirmative Racism. After Carter it also became Affirmative Sexism.
“Even after that understanding bit the dust, some AA programs involve aggressive recruiting to see that a net is cast over the largest reasonable pool of applicants. That does not require preferential hiring or admissions.”
I’ve seen these programs in action, they recruit at college gay and lesbian clubs, black student groups, etc. These are the *only* people given an opportunity to apply for jobs. Anyone not a ‘woman or minority’ is locked out, deliberatly and intentionally discriminated against. They do not just expand the pool of applicants, the recruitment pool excludes non-minorities (i.e., straight white men).
“Many valuable affirmative action efforts, in short, could easily survive a strong ban on racial preferences.”
If instutionalized racism and sexism are valuable and worth preserving and protecting, you may be right. But all such measures require violating the letter and spirit of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which specifically and in exhaustive language prohibits anuything like AA. I believe that Lyndon Johnson said when he signed it that if it could be turned into reverse discrimination, he’d eat his hat. Since he’s dead I imagine he has a good excuse, his hat is safe.
I’m skeptical that anything about AA could ever be non-discriminatory, despite the rhetoric that’s been invented around it to prove that black is white. AA requires that race and sex be the first and primary considerations, not that they be excluded from consideration, in fact AA prevents them from being excluded as a factor in hiring/admissions/whatever.
Rich