Another “Victim” Of Prop. 2, Another Pathetic Edit

Nichole Christian’s OpEd in today’s Detroit Free Press is pathetic, in both the formal and informal senses of the term (as defined by a version of the New Oxford American Dictionary built into the Apple operating system):

pa•thet•ic |pəˈθetik| |pəˌθɛdɪk| |pəˌθɛtɪk|

adjective

1 arousing pity, esp. through vulnerability or sadness : she looked so pathetic that I bent down to comfort her….

• informal: miserably inadequate: his test scores in Chemistry were pathetic.

In her OpEd, “Anti-Affirmative Action Vote Pushes Out One Of The Truest Builders Of A Better Future,” Ms. Chastain argues that her good friend, Marla Philpot, an assistant principal at Port Huron High School, has decided to pack up and leave Michigan for Montgomery County, Maryland (where she has a new job as “an administrator at one of Montgomery County’s most ethnically diverse high schools”).

Unlike the stream of people leaving Michigan because the economy is drying up (see this column that appeared the same day), “Marla’s job didn’t dry up. But she feels Michigan’s hospitality did, particularly to people of color.”

“I want to be in a place where people believe in hope and opportunity for every citizen,” she said. “Proposal 2 just seems to close the door to that sort of thinking. It’s not that the grass is so much greener in Maryland. But they’re at least trying to work through the difficulties of living and schooling together in spite of race and class. We’ve been unwilling to face race here for 40 years.”

On the contrary, it appears that Ms. Philpot’s complaint (and certainly Ms. Christian’s complaint) is that the citizens of Michigan did decide to “face race,” and they decided they wanted to live in a state that did not favor some citizens and disfavor others based on their race. Ms. Philpot, however, apparently believes that any community that refuses to provide her with preferences based on her race is not being hospitable.

Ms. Philpot’s fleeing colorblind equality and moving south is more than a little ironic. In the “Great Migration” of the early 20th century many blacks left the South for what they thought were the greener pastures of the North. From 1910 to 1930 Detroit’s black population increased from 6,000 to 120,000, in part because black refugees from race-based discrimination hoped to find not only more economic opportunity but also a community committed to the principle of colorblind racial equality.

It is unfortunate — no, it is truly pathetic — that so many of Michigan’s editorial writers, teachers, professors, and religious and business and “civil rights” leaders, etc., have abandoned that principle, but it is enormously encouraging that such a substantial majority of Michigan’s citizens have not.

Say What? (5)

  1. released February 27, 2007 at 6:32 am | | Reply

    Ms. Philpot does not need preferential treatment nor does she want it. She has 2 degrees from Michigan and working on one from and Ivy League. What she wants, I think, is a level playing field where white male privilege does not prevail so that her students will have access.

  2. John Rosenberg February 27, 2007 at 9:32 am | | Reply

    A field is not level when some players are given preferences based on their race. If you will point to examples of “white male privilege” in the admissions to Michigan universities or hiring by state agencies or whatever I will join you in condemning it.

  3. Redhead February 27, 2007 at 8:43 pm | | Reply

    Is she leaving because of proposal 2 or because she wasn’t going to be hired back at her current job? Might want to look into it.

  4. Chetly Zarko March 10, 2007 at 2:42 pm | | Reply

    Redhead,

    Your comments seem prescient. I just reported on Zarko Research’s blog (mine) that she is definitely leaving because she’s not going to be back at Port Huron – or something along those lines. And probably nowhere in Michigan – she’s a witness favorable to attornies suing her own school district.

    While I won’t pass judgement on her – some, indeed many, whistleblowers provide one of our noblest services, reading the court papers on this one makes it look very odd. And not telling her “friend” the columnist Nichole Christian about those facts, is also revealing.

  5. Laura November 7, 2009 at 9:30 pm | | Reply

    I worked for this woman and discovered that she is an incompetent bully. She is an equal opportunity abuser and was disliked by all of her faculty, Black, White Hispanic et al.

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