MCRI Critics … In Their Own Words

Members of the NAACP, the National Organization of Women, and other groups opposed to the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative met in Muskegon Saturday to map strategy. Based on this report, they’ve got their work cut out for them.

Supporters of MCRI argue that discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, and gender is wrong and that the state should not hand out benefits or burdens based on any of those protected categories.

And what do MCRI’s critics say? Here’s what Maryann Lee, Executive Director of the Michigan State Conference of the NAACP, said in Muskegon:

“If it passes, we will roll back more than 40 years of progress.”

She thinks more work needs to be done to create an equal society. “What we know is that women have not made it. We still hold less than 30% of the management and executive positions, even though we are 51% of the voting population, and over 50% of the general population. African Americans have not made it. The poverty gap is very wide in terms of African American workers and non-African American workers. So, we have not made it yet.”

In other words, we cannot treat people without regard for their race, ethnicity, or gender because we “have not made it.” It sounds like what she means by “making it” is achieving perfect representational parity of all groups in everything. Do we really want to delay equal treatment that long?

Compared to Representative Jerry Koolman of Grand Rapids, however, Ms. Lee was a model of clarity.

Representative Jerry Koolman of Grand Rapids is sympathetic to some of the ideas behind the initiative, but opposes the ballot measure. He says, “I am not a fan necessarily of affirmative action. However, we have a situation currently yet in this state, as do many states, where we don’t have the type of education available that’s the same in urban and suburban districts, or even rural districts. I’m not prepared to throw out what we have, though, until I’m confident that our educational system has parity and that we’re doing everything we can to recruit and make sure that we have diverse communities.”

Got that? I’m not sure what he was trying to say, but if the above means anything (a doubtful proposition) I think it means that he is not willing to require that everyone be treated without regard to race etc. until all the schools are equal, by which he presumably means produce equal educational results. Again, that might be a long wait.

Not all the explanations of opposition to MCRI were as forward-looking as those of Ms. Lee and Rep. Koolman. Some were backward-looking:

… some will fight the “Michigan Civil Rights Initiative” to make sure we don’t go back to the ways of the old days. Rosemary Kowalski of the Muskegon-Ottawa Counties chapter of the National Organization of Women says, “When I first started looking for jobs, the newspapers were listed women only jobs, and men only jobs. And they didn’t blatantly say people of color only or white only, but it was implied.”

Ms. Kowalski of NOW did not explain why she is afraid that barring the state from giving preferences based on race, ethnicity, or gender would result in going back to “the old days” where racial and gender preferences were prevalent.