InsideHigherEd has an interesting article about the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative. (HatTip to Brian Ladd)
Read the comments as well; many of the commenters thought the article unfair for quoting BAMN organizers repeating their frequently rejected accusations about the “fraud” of describing a measure that would ban racial discrimination as a civil rights measure without quoting MCRI organizers in response. Others thought the article about as fair as you could expect from a publication immersed in higher education.
As for me, I believe that any article that quotes Carl Cohen, University of Michigan philosophy professor and long time campaigner for equal rights, is ipso facto good:
“Might Michigan voters be different from those in other states, in defeating it?” asks Carl Cohen, a professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan and longtime advocate of race-neutral admissions policies. “There is a very well financed campaign here to defeat the MCRI. Businesses find it very useful to have the universities do their ethnic dirty work. How successful that campaign will be I simply do not know.”
….
Cohen says the ballot measure would not end affirmative action. “It will end preference,” he says. “Preference is the issue. The words ‘affirmative action’ do not appear in the initiative at all.
“Preference is both wrong, and damaging,” adds Cohen. “It is morally wrong because it favors those of a given skin color or national origin and disfavors other skin colors and origins…It puts all minority accomplishments under a cloud; it reinforces the lies, the stereotypes of racial inferiority. It is a disaster for fine minority scholars and students — of whom there are very many — who need no charity to be admitted, or to succeed.”
There was one thing in the article that struck me as a bit, well, odd. Note:
According to an online poll conducted by the University of Michigan student newspaper in January, more than three-quarters of respondents said they supported the proposed change to the state Constitution prohibiting the use of race and gender special preferences in university admissions, government employment and state contracting.
Still, not all students feel that way….
The author then went on through the remainder of a long paragraph quoting one student on the evils of “institutional and systemic white supremacy,” etc.
You’d think an academic writer, or a writer in a publication about and for academics, would know that if “more than three quarters of respondents” in a poll of University of Michigan students support MCRI, you wouldn’t need to add, much less with a “Still…,” that not all do.
I’m a UofM grad student. BAMN and their ilk are, somewhat surprisingly, not terribly popular in Ann Arbor. As the article mentions, student polls have consistently shown a firm majority favor MCRI. We’ll see how this turns out at election time statewide though! Rusty old Detroit is a formidable danger to it.
Carl Cohen nails it though. My undergrad institution was pretty much open admissions, but when I came here, I suddenly realized if I were to doubt the academic legitimacy of the presence of a black student on campus, I’d actually be justified, because UofM does discriminate based on race. Don’t people realize what poison preferences are?
IHE is a very seriously biased and heavily censored site. It in no way surprises me that it did not allow Jennifer Gratz and her colleagues to address BAMN’s fraud accusations. IHE does, indeed, accurately represent what colleges and universities have become. That is a scandal.
Just to be fair…A reporter from Inside Higher Ed did call for a comment. Unfortunately, I was on a plane and left a message for him after I landed and after business hours (the same day he called) and I assume, since he hasn’t called me back, after his deadline.
M.J. Wise writes:
>>>” My undergrad institution was pretty much open admissions, but when I came here, I suddenly realized if I were to doubt the academic legitimacy of the presence of a black student on campus, I’d actually be justified, because UofM does discriminate based on race. Don’t people realize what poison preferences are?”
Were blacks the only students you doubt the “academic legitimacy” of?
–Cobra
I posted the last comment before reading the inside higher ed article — Now that I have read it, I would have to say that the biggest bias in the article is the poll that they cite. The poll that IHE cites shows MCRI pretty much in a dead heat. This poll was commissioned by the local ABC station and was done by a pollster that — well, let’s just say is not known for his accuracy. The bias comes in when you know that there was a poll done, by a reputable polling company, days after this poll (and released prior to the IHE deadline) and shows polling numbers for MCRI much more in line with where they’ve been over the past 3 years. This poll shows MCRI passing 55-36. This poll has gotten little (if any) media coverage and the responses from the media as to why they aren’t covering it, but chose to cover a poll a week earlier which clearly was an anomaly, are quite interesting.
Ah, but Cobra, I said if I doubted the academic legitimacy – it was a rhetorical statement. I do not like to make sweeping judgments about an individual in a group based on generalized characteristics- maybe you can understand then why I find preferences like this are ill-advised.
M.J. Wise writes:
>>>”Ah, but Cobra, I said if I doubted the academic legitimacy – it was a rhetorical statement. I do not like to make sweeping judgments about an individual in a group based on generalized characteristics- maybe you can understand then why I find preferences like this are ill-advised.”
OK. I’ll play along with your semantics. Let me amend my question.
IF you were to “doubt the academic legitimacy” of any students on campus, would blacks be the only group you’d target?
–Cobra