As Jennifer Gratz, director of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative effort, commented below in this post, MCRI has just submitted 508,000 signatures to the Michigan secretary of state, 200,000 more than necessary to place the proposal to end racial preferences in Michigan on the ballot.
Supporters of racial preferences continue to attempt to obfuscate what this measure is designed to do. For example:
U-M President Mary Sue Coleman said in a statement Thursday that the constitutional amendment would be detrimental.
“I believe that this proposal, despite its name, does not further the cause of civil rights in Michigan. It is about closing the door to higher education for many of our citizens,” she said.
Coleman said it would prohibit such programs as those that encourage girls to study science.
Coleman is correct only if “civil rights” means affirmative action, which, alas, is now widely believed. As for girls in science, I’m the father of a girl (strike that: she’s now a young woman, really) in science, and I hope you will believe me when I say that I would not look kindly on any discrimination that prevented or discouraged girls from going into science. But I’m not sure the government needs programs to “encourage” girls to study science. If encouragement is needed, encourage everyone regardless of gender.
Nor is Coleman’s “closing the door” metaphor apt. There is no question that the door to the University of Michigan is closed to many deserving students, but there is a serious question as to whether the door should be wider for students of some races and ethnicities than others.
And then there’s this canard: According to the Ann Arbor News article linked above:
Opponents of the initiative – including universities, civil rights groups, labor and business groups – said it will end affirmative action programs that promote diversity and help stop discrimination against minorities and women.
MCRI would certainly end race preference programs, and so might well reduce “diversity” as currently defined. But I continue to wonder how people can argue with a straight face (if indeed they do) that ending the privilege of college admissions officers to discriminate in favor of minorities — a privilege they have fought tooth and nail to retain — would suddenly unleash them to discriminate against minorities.
Its too bad that affirmative action benefits people who all ready sit in the upper ranks of the minority social stratum while the majority of minorities are condemned to public education gulags by these same academic manadrins. These people might try to reform the situation they have created that leaves 50% of minorities so short changed that they can’t compete in universities rather than create artificial opportunities that only serve to tar the truly meritorious with the “affirmative action label.”
I am sick of the PC morlocks who trash energy, drive, merit in favor of skin color.
This is perhaps one of the most mind-numbing paradoxes of this whole issue.
Why would one believe that colleges and universities that currently bend and twist the constitution to the benefit of minorities would suddenly become bastions of malice and hatred for minorities and conspire to exclude them?
Another of these paradoxes is quotas and underrepresntation. If taken to the logical extreme, minorities are limited in any field to their proportion of the populace. Once they hit the magic number, all future aspirants in a given field will have to be diverted into other fields. Or not, if whites are to be the only group allowed to be underrepresented.
Nobody important writes:
>>>Why would one believe that colleges and universities that currently bend and twist the constitution to the benefit of minorities would suddenly become bastions of malice and hatred for minorities and conspire to exclude them?”
Because we who favor Affirmative Action know the INDEFENSIBLE social reality of America BEFORE preferance programs. The better question is what makes one believe that removing speed restriction on highways would result in more responsible driving by motorists.
–Cobra
It is not the speed of the vehicles travelling on a road that consitutes danger; it is is the differential in speeds these vehicles that creates the danger.
Still, it is highly improbable that the admissions staff and the administration of the University of Michigan will revert to pre-AA racist practices, unless you think that racism is inherent to whites and lacking the restraint of law will inevitably lead to injustice towards minorities. If it is not inherent, then it must be learned behavior and it does seem that those admissions staff and adninistrations have learned. Unless it is a cruel subterfuge designed to lull minorities into complacency while secretly flaming the white backlash against AA. Then once AA is ended, the true feelings of what we thought were guilty white liberals in academia are revealed in all their ugliness.
If Mary Sue Coleman was worried about “closing the door to higher education for many of our citizens” she could increase the size of UM Law school so that the standards could be so low that any one could get in.
After all how could she be “closing the door to higher education for many of our citizens” ?
Cobra,
I was not able to respond immediately to your previous response to my last commentary. Do you really believe the nonsense that you are spewing in this forum. Be my guest Cobra, wallow in your ignorance. The problem Cobra if you had not seen it yet, is that you claim that I said that blacks are incapable of competing with ASians and whites is rubbish. Anyone who knows what real life is , know that blacks are capable of getting B’s and A’s in college. You can see the list of blacks who are members of their college athletic teams who are designated scholar atlethes because they scored high grades . I know of instances of blacks who are engineering majors in the dean’s list of UC DAvis and Auburn who are football players. YOu see Cobra, the problem is not that blacks are incapable of getting good grades in biochemistry or mechanical engineering but there are not too many of them. If you have the same percentage of blacks in the black population who achieving in the same level as Asians then you would probably not be spouting the the nonsense that you are engaging in. The problem is not individual black achievement. The problem is raising the percentage of black achievers.
Cobra says,
” Because we who favor Affirmative Action know the INDEFENSIBLE social reality of America BEFORE preferance programs. The better question is what makes one believe that removing speed restriction on highways would result in more responsible driving by motorists. ”
THE ONLY INDEFENSIBLE SOCIAL CLAIM IS THE CLAIM OF RACIAL OR ALUMNI PREFRENCE BEFORE, DURING OR THE EVENTUAL DEMISE OF RACIAL AND ALUMNI PREFERENCE. REMOVING THE RESCRICTION OF RACIAL PREFERENCES WILL CAUSE HUMANITY TO MOVE FORWARD, IMPROVE SOCIETY, CAUSE THE THE DEMISE OF THE CLAIMS OF THESE VICTIMIZATION PIMPS,REWARD THOSE WHO WORK HARD, HELP THE POOR, HELP BLACKS BY CAUSING THEM TO STRIVE HARDER AND CEASE DEPENDING ON THE HANDOUT OF RACE PREFERENCES, gOT THAT cOBRA?
THE POST ON 12:21 AM WAS MADE BY LEO CURZ
THE POST ON 12:21 AM WAS MADE BY LEO CRUZ
folks,
Nevermine about Mary Sue Coleman ( UM president and a biochemistry prof ) Along with Lee Bollinger ( UM ex- prexy and now Columbia’s prexy ), Lampher ( prof at UM Law ) and Patricia Gurin ( author of that psychological study reminiscent of Cyril Burt ), they will all parrot the same party line in support of race preferences. Apparently they all want to get to heaven. This is the requisite ” good deed ” they have to do here on earth.
America before racial preferences for disadvantaged minorities was much more defensible than afterwards. What we have now is an alternative welfare project, in comparison to the prequotas society. In any case the republic of the majority commands patriotic loyalty, especially relative to a dictatorship of minority aggression. The moral consideration is whether the government may be called good when it uses aggression to force affirmative action on those who have something to offer.
I imagine the following legal testimony from the admissions officer:
I am so incompetent I am incapable of not discriminating. My administration is so incompetent they are incapable of finding competent staff. We must uphold this policy because if we must discriminate it should be in favor of minorities. By prior legal agreement the incoherence of my argument cannot be used as part of my job evaluation.
When do you suppose we’ll get around to the only solution? Fire the trustees and replace the administrations.
leo cruz writes:
>>>REMOVING THE RESCRICTION OF RACIAL PREFERENCES WILL CAUSE HUMANITY TO MOVE FORWARD, IMPROVE SOCIETY, CAUSE THE THE DEMISE OF THE CLAIMS OF THESE VICTIMIZATION PIMPS,REWARD THOSE WHO WORK HARD, HELP THE POOR, HELP BLACKS BY CAUSING THEM TO STRIVE HARDER AND CEASE DEPENDING ON THE HANDOUT OF RACE PREFERENCES, gOT THAT cOBRA?”
A few questions for you. Why do you think racial preferences for minorities were instituted only 40 or so years ago, and what has changed in America in that short time period that has eliminated the need for them?
What is your explaination for the irrefutable racial attrocities, discriminations, & subjugations against minorities throughout American history?
What caused them? Why do you believe that many of today’s conservative white males in leadership, and positions of authority are any different than their predecessors? You claim in previous posts that you’re “well aware” of the glass ceiling against Asian Americans. Well, in any fair assessment by rational individuals, a person who is put at a disadvantage by a glass ceiling is a “victim.” Why do you have a problem with the label “victim?” In our society, there is the duality of “cause and effect.” Why is your vitriolic outrage (all caps, Leo? I only use it for emphasis) against VICTIMS and not PERPRETRATORS?
Of course, to be embraced by the new conservative backlash movement, I believe one has to marginalize any feelings of injustice for non-majority citizens. One is allowed to make all the impotent, non-controversial beautitudes about fairness and equality with all the appropriate winks and nods, but the core of the agenda is always firm and unwavering: The unchallenged proliferation of white privilege and monopolization.
–Cobra
Thursday Linkage/Open Thread
Here’s a round-up of interesting links around the blogosphere:
— Buck has been busy. Check out his guide for web site creation for bloggers.
— Josh Claybourn and Hugh Hewitt discuss: “What American not in government has the most influence -…