Discriminations

Writing in the Weekly Standard this week, Stephen Hayes gets it exactly right.

In the speech that launched his meteoric rise in national politics, the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama called for a politics of hope, denounced “those who are preparing to divide us,” and offered a direct challenge. “I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America--there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America--there’s the United States of America.”

It was a moving speech, filled with hopeful sentiments. But two years later, Senator Barack Obama, with two years’ experience in the Senate and his eye on a presidential run, taped a radio ad attacking the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), going out of his way to defend racial preference policies that by their very definition divide Americans into blacks, whites, Latinos, and Asians.

MCRI, as Hayes notes, was an initiative (ultimately passed with 58% of the vote) to bar the state from discriminating against or giving 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.

MCRI, in short, was an effort to bring about the very America whose hymn Obama sang at the 2004 Democratic Convention. So, how did he respond? Not only by opposing MCRI, but by actually making an advertisement opposing it:

This is Senator Barack Obama. And I'm asking you to vote no on Proposal 2. We've made great strides in our society towards fairness and opportunity for all people. But whether we like to admit it or not, there's still barriers to women and minorities reaching their full potential. Proposal 2 may sound like a reasonable way to move towards a Michigan that is blind to differences in sex and race but don't be fooled by the reassuring rhetoric. If the initiative becomes law it would wipe out programs that help women and minorities get a good education and jobs. It would hurt initiatives that help women and minorities build their own businesses. And it would eliminate efforts to help our children enter fields such as science, engineering, and mathematics. Proposal 2 closes these doors to many in Michigan and it moves us further away from a country of full opportunity. Proposal 2 is wrong for Michigan and it's wrong for America.

Again, Hayes has exactly the right response:

Race-neutral policies are “wrong for America”? A measure that echoes the 1964 Civil Rights Act is just “reassuring rhetoric”? The same campaign that paid for Obama’s ad ran an ad comparing the end of racial preferences to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

Hayes then goes on to say about the best thing that can be said for the liklihood that President Obama would “transcend” race, which is that leading Republicans have been almost as bad on the preference issue.

Read the whole thing.