An editorial in today’s Ann Arbor News articulately stated that paper’s opposition to racial preferences and to the thuggish behavior of many MCRI opponents.
Profound injustices are part of our nation’s sad legacy of slavery and institutionalized racism. That great divide between the races largely continues today, and for many is a part of their everyday lives.
Yet the concept of equal opportunity is undermined when preferences are given to a group on the basis of skin color or because of gender. It is hard to reconcile equal opportunity with a social strategy that gives race-based preferences or plus points.
….
… Many who privately support MCRI fear they’d be labeled racist if they spoke out publicly. We heard opponents of the plan describe it as obscene — hardly an attitude that recognizes opposing views as having a place at the nation’s table of pluralistic debate.
Unfortunately, many critics of MCRI who profoundly believe in diversity of opportunity are unable to accept diversity of opinion on this issue, or work to find common ground. By identifying MCRI supporters as bigots, opponents fail to accept that many will vote for MCRI because they truly believe everyone should be treated alike.
How long will preferences be needed? the editors asked MCRI opponents.
None of the individuals who met with our editorial board could offer anything close to a clear timeline of when it might become superfluous, although several said it could span generations. How will we know that affirmative action no longer is needed? What are the benchmarks for equality?
In addition, the editors recognized that the attempt to make the debate turn on alleged damage to women is an obfuscatory diversion.
Many discussions about MCRI have targeted its impact on gender-based programs. But we would never be facing a constitutional amendment on this issue alone. Racial preferences are at the core of this debate, and we sidestep the necessary, difficult discussion about race when we throw up the gender smokescreen.
Despite all this eloquence, when the editors got to the bottom line they were suddenly struck dumb. What was their bottom line?
[All] that said, MCRI isn’t the right approach, and we encourage a no vote.
Why isn’t ending racial preferences “the right approach” to ending racial preferences? What is “the right approach”?
Who knows. The editors of the Ann Arbor News obviously don’t, or aren’t saying. All they say is that the “immediate, blanket elimination of all race and gender preferences” is not the way to end race and gender preferences and that we “need an exit strategy from affirmative action.”
They sound just like the “gradualists” who opposed the abolitionists because they regarded abolition as “immediatist.
I think you miss the point of the article. They are against MCRI. The article was published to persuade those wanting equal treatment to vote no. The article is a smoke screen designed for people who may vote yes to see that the bill has merits but isn’t the right approach. The article is skimming off the cream for the pro-MCRI folks.
It’s merits are praiseworthy but you still shouldn’t vote for MCRI. It’s the wrong solution at the wrong time!
Get it?
Gee, Paul. I don’t think I missed the point at all. My headline said the paper opposed MCRI. The text quoted the paper telling people to vote no. I was criticizing the paper.
Get it?
This sounds just like the Sandra Day O’Connor ruling, saying that MAYBE in 25 years, IF the racial & ethnic differences in educational ability and acheivement (that has been a fact since the beginning of human history) are TOTALLY gone…..then the Supreme Court MAY reconsider the Grutter decision.
Black people in the 1960s finally decided that the shell game of “it’s the right cause, just not quite the right time yet” was not acceptable and decided to not just passively wait for the courts, but actively force societal change. Unless there is a white Martin Luter King or Malcom X, white people will never have civil rights. Which will probably never happen, since most white people are too dumb and lazy and too frightened by “political correctness” to dare to offend anybody.
I’m more optimistic about the article, although it clearly got some things wrong.
90% of the op-eds in major papers have been “MCRI is evil. Vote against it,” or some variation thereof. This acknowledges the paucity of that reasoning. Obviously, it doesn’t “get it” in the end when it puts things to together, but editorial boards are political bodies.
Also, my experience with the Ann Arbor News has been ironic. In the past, they have been relatively (compared to other papers) fair on this issue. Part of goes back to being the paper of historical record closest to the Supreme Court cases. I believe it really was a “try” on their part to understand MCRI. It’s certainly not an echo of the politically-correct downright-intimidation types of arguments we get from other sources, claiming that MCRI supporters are lying, racist, evil cruds that are worse than 9/11 and Katrina combined. There is actually an emotional force to that argument – some people might not vote for MCRI for risk of being so-labelled. Fortunately, the founders saw fit to equip the ballot box with a right to privacy, so it only goes so far.