I have pointed out here many times that the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative would not ban affirmative action. Now Roger Clegg does so, at length and compellingly, in the Detroit Free Press:
When the term was first used in the civil rights context — in an executive order signed by President John Kennedy in 1961 — it meant taking positive steps, proactive measures — affirmative action, get it? — to make sure that racial discrimination was not occurring. The idea was that the employers had to do more than just give lip service to nondiscrimination; they had to make sure that no one in their companies was discriminated against, and they had to communicate that policy, and enforce it, and root out the discrimination and discriminators that were already there.
MCRI does not ban that sort of affirmative action. In fact, it requires it.
Another meaning of the term “affirmative action” is casting a wide net — that is, recruiting far and wide, and making sure that everyone knows that he or she is welcome to apply for a job or a college or a contract, regardless of race, ethnicity or sex. You don’t just recruit at suburban high schools, but in the inner cities, too. You advertise in a wide variety of media, including minority-oriented media. You don’t just rely on an old-boy network, but reach out to everyone.
MCRI does not ban that sort of affirmative action either.
Then there is affirmative action that gives special consideration to some folks, but not on the basis of race, ethnicity or sex. For instance, perhaps an employer makes special accommodations for the disabled. Or perhaps a college has a special scholarship for students who are the first in their families to go to college, or who come from impoverished backgrounds. Or perhaps a city decides that it wants to set aside a certain percentage of its contracting for new firms, or small firms, or locally owned firms.
Those programs are perfectly consistent with MCRI, too, because they have nothing to do with race, ethnicity or sex. People who are disabled, or who are the first in their families to go to college, or who are poor — all of them come in all colors and both sexes.
The fact of the matter is, then, that there is only one kind of affirmative action that will be outlawed by the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative: treating people differently — some better and some worse — because of their skin color, or what country their ancestors came from, or what kind of reproductive organs they have….
Clegg concludes:
So what’s at issue is not all “affirmative action” but only a particular kind of affirmative action: whether the government ought to be able to “discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin.”
That quote, by the way, is what MCRI actually says. Those are the words that will be before the voters of Michigan in November.
The only way to defeat MCRI — other than keeping it off the ballot, a mighty effort that so far has failed — is to obscure what it is about. A great deal of money is being spent in Michigan to do this.
