The Missouri Civil Rights Initiative was launched yesterday at a Kansas City press conference, and, as usual, the press coverage was both instructive and amusing.
Take, for example, the generally well-done article this morning in the Columbia Missourian. It begins:
KANSAS CITY — Missouri opponents of affirmative action announced Tuesday they will launch plans for a November 2008 ballot measure that would ban government-sponsored race and gender preferences in the state.
Because this states, accurately, that the MCRI would “ban government-sponsored race and gender preferences,” the author, Danny Lawhon, can be forgiven for describing the initiative’s supporters as “opponents of affirmative action” when, in fact, they don’t oppose all affirmative action, only those policies based on race, gender, or ethnic preferences.
Less forgivable is the following paragraph:
The proposed initiative would ask voters to ban “preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting.”
True, the initiative would do that, but that’s only half of what it would do. Here is the complete operative provision, with the Missourian’s omission in italics:
The State shall not discriminate against or grant preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting.
Moving on to the amusing, the University of Missouri’s deputy chancellor believes that racial discrimination is rational and failing to discriminate is irrational. Really.
MU Deputy Chancellor Michael Middleton declined to say what university policies or programs would be at risk should the ballot measure succeed until he and others had examined the language in the initiative. However, Middleton said its passage could result in a “problematic” situation for the university.
“The initiative’s success would inhibit a university in considering relevant factors in decisions they’re charged to make,” he said. “It would certainly be difficult for the people making these decisions to make them rationally. This will certainly be a major debate for the state and the nation this upcoming election. But if that’s what the law would require, then we will comply.”
He added that “MU would not take a political position on the debate over affirmative action.”
However, he encouraged Missourians to give their honest opinions regarding the initiative.
“I think most people in the state understand that our current methods of recruiting, giving aid to, and retaining racially underrepresented groups serve as a great benefit to the university and to the state,” Middleton said. “But I most definitely welcome hearing what the public has to say.”
Here’s a suggestion. If the University of Missouri really wants to hear the public’s “honest opinions” about racial preferences, it can go a long way toward enabling and informing those opinions by releasing complete data on the nature and its extent of its racial preferences and their impact. This would include such information as the grades and test scores of entering students, their average grades while in attendance, and their graduation rates, broken down by race and ethnicity.
Surely the university has this data. If it won’t release it, the citizens of Missouri would be entitled to question the sincerity of the university’s professed desire to hear their “honest opinions.”
Compared to the Missourian’s coverage, the article by the Kansas City Star’s Lynne Franey looks like pure propaganda, beginning with its sub-head, “Anti-affirmative-action group wants Missourians to vote on what it calls preferential treatment.” [Note: this link, initially incorrect, has been fixed.] The lede:
An anti-affirmative-action group wants to have Missouri voters decide on an initiative banning what it calls state-level race-based “preferential treatment” in public contracting, education and employment.
What do you call racial preferences, Ms. Franey? Do you correct the vocabulary of all groups you write about, or only the ones you oppose?
UPDATE
I have just sent the following letter to the editor of the Kansas City Star:
As someone whose counsel was sought by the drafters of the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative, I was surprised and disappointed by the blatant editorializing in your news article on its launch (“Race, gender politics at issue,” April 25). Or perhaps, following your style, I should say in “what you call news.”
Consider the sub-head: “Anti-affirmative-action group wants Missourians to vote on what it calls preferential treatment.” And the first paragraph: “An anti-affirmative-action group wants to have Missouri voters decide on an initiative banning what it calls state-level race-based ‘preferential treatment’ in public contracting, education and employment.” Yet you managed to quote the NAACP’s support of affirmative action without referring with equal snideness to “what it calls affirmative action.”
Excuse me, but what would you have us call racial and ethnic preferences if you don’t like “preferential treatment”?
In the future, please keep your editorializing to the opinion pages.
I am a little confused, John, by why you think that “anti-affirmative action” is an unsound premise. I think that I am anti-affirmative action.
Way back in the dark ages (1968), I received what amounted to a full scholarship to the University of Illinois. This scholarship certainly was based on need. My folks couldn’t afford to send me to school. But, I had the academic record and test scores to justify the scholarship.
To me, “affirmative action” has never had any other meaning than racial and sexual quotas. What other meaning does it have? I know that proponents of racial and sexual quotas are now inventing a history in which affirmative action meant something else, but I don’t buy it.
Why does some new term or program need to be invented? Scholarship assistance to deserving students who can demonstrate need has long been policy at every university. The real question is whether those students should be required to demonstrate a solid academic record and acceptable test scores.
If what you are trying to do is phrase your political action in more acceptable PR terms, well more power to you. As much as you would like to argue otherwise, I think that if you are opposed to racial and sexual quotas, you are “anti-affirmative action.”
There are in fact all sorts of affirmative action that do not involve racial preferences, such as publicizing job openings, scholarships, etc., etc., widely, recruiting widely, etc. Both presidential executive orders implementing affirmative action in the federal government explicitly had this sort of non-discriminatiory, non-preferential affiramtive action in mind, and I see no good reason to let the preferentialists take undisputed owenrship of the term.