Here’s another argument that affirmative action is good for everybody because it’s good for me:
“A lot of people want to make this a black-white issue. It is far from it,” said Debbie Dingell, executive director of community and government relations at General Motors Corp.
“We as women in Michigan are more impacted by this than anybody,” she told a crowd of dozens of supporters at a news conference. “I can look at you all and tell you I wouldn’t have my job at General Motors had affirmative action not existed.”
Well, maybe. Or maybe the fact that she’s been married to Michigan’s powerful Democratic Congressman John Dingell for 24 years didn’t hurt, either.
But I wonder how many people will believe that helping a rich white woman get a high-paying, high profile job (if it did) is reason enough to prevent the Michigan constitution from barring discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and gender. Any policy that gives preferences to women discriminates against men. We’ll find out in November if the people of Michigan really want to continue gender, racial, and ethnic discrimination.
Dingell is co-chair One United Michigan, which promises (threatens?) to spend five million dollars to preserve race, gender, and ethnicity preferences.
Predictably, the Detroit News article by Charlie Cain linked above begins with the widely repeated factual error:
LANSING — Supporters of affirmative action Thursday ramped up their campaign to defeat a November ballot proposal that would end such programs in college admissions and government hiring and contracting.
MCRI, of course, would do no such thing. It would bar only programs that employ racial, gender, or ethnic preferences. All other affirmative action programs would be untouched.
