Leaders of the LGBT community gathered recently in Southfield, Michigan, to voice their support for racial and other preferences, and thus their opposition to the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, a proposal to amend the state constitution that will be on the November 2006 ballot.
Attendees spoke about the need to encourage gay white men to join the battle to retain laws protecting their lesbian and minority brothers and sisters.
“The issue of affirmative action is really about the promise of equality this country holds out. The reality does not meet the promise,” said Triangle Foundation Executive Director Jeff Montgomery, one of the organizers of the Promise of Equality: Affirmative Action Delivers panel discussion at the library.
Montgomery said people can’t pick and choose when they will stand up for equality.
“We’ve always relied on the principal that nobody is free unless everybody is free,” he said. “Now we have to step up and show up when someone else’s rights are affected.”
Is there any reason for “gay white men” to be any more supportive of preferences for women and minorities than non-gay white men? Oh, never mind. But if your support for preferential treatment is based “on the principle that nobody is free unless everybody is free,” shouldn’t all races, genders, sexual persuasions, ethnicities, etc., etc. receive preferential treatment?
I believe that all support for racial preferences is not unreasonable. People who receive the preferences or people who do not believe in the principle that all individuals should be treated without regard to their race, creed, or color can quite reasonably support preferences and oppose MCRI. But that said, quite a bit of what was offered in opposition to MCRI at this meeting was, as usual, pure claptrap.
For example, Jackie Washington, president of the Wayne State Board of Governors, claimed, ridiculously, that if MCRI passes
women’s career horizons – and paychecks – would shrink to levels experienced before protective legislation was passed in the early 1970s.
Khaled Beydoun, the ACLU of Michigan’s Field Organizer acting in opposition to MCRI, said, equally ridiculously, that
elementary and high school science and math programs targeted at women and minorities and gender-based public health initiatives, like breast cancer screenings and women’s shelters, could be endangered by the proposed constitutional amendment.
If “targeted at” means “limited to” women and minorities, MCRI probably would interfere, as it should. But are there any such programs in Michigan public schools? I doubt it, except perhaps for some racially restrictive college programs or activities that should be banned. The health charge is absurd.
George Westerman, a board member of Affirmations Lesbian and Gay Community Center and a principal consultant for IBM Global Services, claimed that the passage of MCRI
would place stumbling blocks before the state’s efforts to build a sound community by encouraging diversity of thought and opinions…. Corporations would be tempted to move out of state or refuse to open offices in Michigan if they were stripped of their ability to aim recruitment efforts at minorities and women.
Really! Westerman must think that blacks think differently from whites. Thoughts like that contribute about as much to “diversity” as an astrologist in an astronomy department. I would, however, like to see a list of companies who would avoid Michigan if they were not allowed to continue discriminating.
What crap! Here in California, Prop 209, which banned race-based AA, has been on the books for almost TEN years. The foes of 209 used exactly those same arguments here at the time. The main difference in our universities since 209 is that “underrepresented” minorities now have a degree that employers know they EARNED.
Re the last quote, would MCRI prohibit private actors from discriminating? I thought it only applied to the state.
Steven – Good point. I believe MCRI only bars state discrimination.