I hope you are all familiar with the work of Stuart Taylor, a scholarly, mild-mannered, Harvard-trained lawyer who writes for the National Journal. But whether your are or not, you must read his current article on the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), “Michigan Voters Defy The Establishment.”
Stuart describes himself as “a supporter of using modest racial preferences to promote integration of our top schools and other elite institutions,” but he nevertheless praises Jennifer Gratz and applauds MCRI’s victory. In the process he does what many, including me, would have thought impossible: he makes my criticisms of MCRI’s opponents (hysterical, disgusting, thuggish, bizarre, distortion and outright misrepresentation, etc.) seem positively mild and moderate by comparison.
Some examples:
- “The opposition campaign consisted mainly of misleading spin, mindless hysteria, and even thuggish intimidation.”
- [After quoting from UM president Mary Sue Coleman’s recent speech: “to speak of tearing out the university’s heart and soul is idiocy. And to speak of admitting the best-qualified students as the ‘path of mediocrity’ is Orwellian.”
- Describes what a One United Michigan radio ad “raved” as “obscene.”
- “To evade the massive proof of discrimination, Michigan officials use a deceptive dodge.”
I recently wrote, here, that the “dissembling, evasions, and stumbling” of the proponents of preferences is actually a hopeful indicator of the status of such preferences today because they “are all a tribute, whether witting or not, to the breadth and depth of popular commitment to the principle holding that Americans deserve to be treated without regard to their race.”
What I was trying to say is what Stuart Taylor said much better:
The grotesque dishonesty of MCRI’s opponents shows that this regime can be sustained only by lies, because it offends the values of the American people.
And, of course, Taylor’s conclusion is absolutely right:
… the 58-percent-to-42-percent victory — over the opposition of the entire establishment and in the face of a Democratic tide — is stunning evidence that the American people don’t buy the racial-preference snake oil….
On no major issue has America’s electorate so resoundingly and repeatedly rejected a policy embraced with such unanimity by the establishment. The electorate is right. The establishment is wrong.
