In Cincinati Bruce Gordon, president of the NAACP, asked the 1,000 people attending a banquet for the local chapter:
“Where are the Medgars in this room?” he asked, referring to slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers. “The future depends on what those in this room are willing to do.”
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Gordon’s speech centered on what one is willing to die for. He asked if anyone were willing to die for voting rights, protection of affirmative action, equal access to affordable health care, the eradication of AIDS, homeownership, a just criminal justice system, equal access to quality education, and eliminating poverty.
“Would you die to save our children? Would you die to secure their future?” asked Gordon. “…The difficulty of success does not relieve us of the obligation to try.”
Die for affirmative action? I think there’s something bordering on the obscene in asking people to die to protect policies that provide preferential treatment based on race and especially in equating race preferences with the rights Medgar Evers and others died struggling to achieve.
But if the NAACP leader’s speech bordered on the obscene, the supporters of racial preferences in Michigan marched boldly over that border, and beyond. A radio ad put out by One United Michigan, the BAMN ally leading the opposition to the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), equates ending race preferences with 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina:
If you could have prevented 9-11 from ever happening…would you have?
If you could have prevented Katrina from ever happening…what would you have done?
On Nov. 7th there’s a national disaster headed for Michigan…the elimination of affirmative action.
And on Nov. 7th there’s only one way to stop this disaster … by voting No on Proposal 2.
Doug Tietz, spokesman for MCRI, responded:
This is very disgusting. How can they talk to a widow of a fireman and say that this is equivalent to 9/11…?
A spokesman for One United Michigan, the group airing the ad, stood by it.
“Taking away opportunities from families and women is exactly like taking away their lives,” Dave Waymire said.
So, according to MCRI opponents, taking away preferential treatment based on race, sex, or ethnicity is equivalent to murder.
According to the latest poll, MCRI still leads among likely voters by nine points, 50% – 41%, even though the opponents are outspending supporters by a large margin. One can only hope that the more people pay attention to ads like this one they more clearly they’ll see how offensive, absurd, and even bizarre the anti-equality position really is.
This is nothing new. Even the Republican party (George Bush, Rich DeVoss – the GOP’s gubenatorial candidate in Michigan, etc) and the people they appoint to the Supreme Court (Souter, O’Connor, Stevens, etc) have consistently said that racial quotas and preferences (which they call “diversity”) are the current definition of civil rights.
When both major political parties say that people who are against racial quotas/preferences are racists, why would black people NOT think of people who are against affirmative action are immoral, racist fascists who need to be silenced by “any means neccessary?”
John, the refrain of “liar” and “fraud” and “racist” and other dirty words just wasn’t working anymore. If it did have an effect in closing some of the gap early, its effect has reached its natural end.
You had to know it was coming. They had to add murderer, terrorist (ironically, BAMN is the group openly embracing any means), and even mindless natural disaster to the list of ad hominem attacks against MCRI and its supporters. The dosage of their rhetoric had to be ratcheted up, like a drug, as the previous charges of mere lying racist had become meaningless (that is the nature of overuse though). Of course, the ad doesn’t target an individual, but that is no less the claim from implication.