I never thought I’d see this, but here is a good argument supporting the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative in a major Michigan newspaper, by talk show host and Friday Detroit News columnist Frank Beckmann.
Those who support racial and gender preferences, and hence oppose MCRI, Beckmann writes,
find themselves in a conundrum of contradiction. They oppose discrimination based on race or sex, but they approve of it simply for purposes of artificially balancing the population in those colleges and jobs.
Affirmative action simply chooses another portion of the population as a victim of discrimination, and it bases that bias on the very factors that civil rights advocates wish to avoid. It moves a different segment of society to the back of the bus.
….
It is this type of double standard that the civil rights movement sought to terminate some 40 years ago.
The civil rights movement was based on equal opportunity for all, regardless of race, gender or national origin….
Without double standards, it sometimes appears, liberals would have no standards at all.
ADDENDUM
But never fear. Despite running the above-referenced good column, The Detroit News couldn’t let a day go by with its usual inanity on the subject of MCRI, this time in the form of a column on the same day by Mark Gaffney, president of the Michigan AFL–CIO.
Gaffney writes that
It is due to the existence of affirmative action that we have girls’ and women’ sports and why girls are not automatically shunted into home economics classes and why girls and women have increased opportunities in education and business.
In other words, girls can’t succeed — there would be no women’s sports, and the only female economists would be home economists — unless they receive special, favorable treatment.
Not only is that not true; it’s insulting to women.
Another Gaffney gaff:
Science, math and engineering remain somewhat hostile environments for women students and teachers; with less women teaching in these professions due to inequity in pay and hiring.
Nationwide, women make up 6.6 percent of the physics faculty, while men comprise 93.4 percent. Why would we continue to act to deny these economic opportunities to half of our children?
As the father of a daughter who just completed her second year of a Ph.D. program in physics, I can say with some authority that the only thing she, and her fellow female graduate students, want is to be treated with non-discriminatory equal respect. If Gaffney came to them and said they didn’t get where they are without special treatment (that, unfortunately, might be true at many places, but not at Caltech) and they couldn’t have successful scientific careers unless they were treated better than the boys, they’d laugh him right out of their labs.
But, hey. If Gaffney and the Michigan AFL–CIO really believe that, why doesn’t he demand that the Physics Dept. at the University of Michigan offer better finanacial aid to women than men, that it lower its admission standards if necessary to attract more women, that it lower its hiring standards (by, for example, hiring women without physics degrees) until it accumulated enough women undergraduate majors and graduate students and faculty to satisfy the Michigan AFL–CIO?
I’m sure the department would appreciate his advice as much as UM president Mary Sue Coleman no doubt does. She has argued, you will recall (and if you don’t, go here), “that women’s health issues could only be adequately addressed if women were actually conducting the research.”
According to this summary put out by the Stanford Linear Accelerator, there are six “flavors” (their term) of quarks: Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom. Could “Strange” and “Top” possibly be male and “Charm” and “Bottom” female? Perhaps President Gaffney could persuade his comrades to endow an AFL–CIO Chair in Physics at UM and President Coleman could hire a female physicist to fill it and explore the question.
We can at least give Mr. Gaffney credit for having a good sense of humor.
Nationwide, women make up 6.6 percent of the physics faculty, while men comprise 93.4 percent. Why would we continue to act to deny these economic opportunities to half of our children?
I’m sure the reason Jessie went into physics was for the money.
I think we need more woman union leaders. Mark Gaffney ought to immediately step down, so that he can be replaced by someone more diverse.
Mr. Garney should have researched women’s athletics better. Black women are slightly underrepresented in women’s sports. Hispanic and Asian-American women are hugely underpresented in college sports. All Title IX did was created college scholarships for upper middle class white females.
However, the AA in sports still has not created a culture where women athletes are willing to walk on and play. In addition, Mr. Garney should look at the difference in participation in intramural sports for men and women.
Women aren’t as interested in participating in sports as men. It’s not the job of a college to change this.
Many women prefer to raise children and to work at a minimal job so that they can devote themselves to their families.
It’s not the job of a college to change this.
How do we get these nosy busybodies out of their crusade to force women to be men? They are a serious problem. We need to find a way to get them out of the educational system, or else, we need to get them focused on doing a real job.
I think it’s important to note that Gaffney is married to Trisha Stein, who happens to be One United Michigan’s (a group that has joined BAMN in opposing MCRI) executive director.
Gaffney could probably benefit from a very basic course in English composition. His sentence starting “It is due” is a symantical nightmare.
I had home ec classes in middle and high school. They were very useful. I remember things I learned in them to this day. They did not prevent my majoring in chemistry and math.
Wonder how Mr. Gaffney accounts for the fact that more than half the persons enrolling in college these days are women. More than 80% of the newly degreed veterinarians in the US and Canada are women. (Maybe there should be aff action in higher ed. But for males.)
But if I could have Mr. Gaffney to explain anything it would be this. The Presidents of the two most prestigious public universities in Michigan are both women. One them, Mary Sure Coleman, President of the University of Michigan, got her degrees in chemistry long before gender aff action came around. However did she manage that? Might she have succeeded on her own merits without any preferential treatment? Perish the thought.