Discriminations

Peter Slevin, a self-described “staff writer” at the Washington Post, a self-described “newspaper,” wrote an editorial yesterday, in the form of a news article, about efforts to promote what Slevin was pleased to call “[Ward] Connerly’s self-described ‘civil rights initiative.’”

Does Slevin, the self-described “staff writer,” believe his article would have been misleading if he had omitted “self-described” and simply used the name of the initiatives that are being proposed, such as the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative, and left off the quotes? Could some intrepid researcher check the archives and let me know whether the Washington Post described the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as, say, “Martin Luther King’s self-described civil rights act?” Has it described any civil rights legislation in that manner?

Proponents of the initiatives firmly believe that insisting that their “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” is in fact a “civil rights” measure. Critics of the initiatives, who want to preserve racial preferences, habitually complain that such language somehow misappropriates civil rights language, even though it closely tracks the language of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and other civil rights measures. Shouldn’t Slevin, the “self-described” staff writer, acknowledge that his use of “self-described” and his gotcha quotes echo the language of initiative critics?

The substance of self-described “staff-writer” Slevin’s self-described article is no better than his politically slanted language. Here’s how he begins:

CHICAGO -- Sixteen months after voters in Michigan voted to kill affirmative action in the public sphere, opponents of preferences based on race and gender are pushing five more states to ban the practice.

Foes of affirmative action, which is meant to address current and historical inequities, delivered 128,744 signatures to Colorado authorities earlier this month. Similar organizations in Arizona, Missouri, Oklahoma and Nebraska are circulating petitions as civil rights groups and educators are mobilizing to defeat the measures.

First, voters in Michigan did not vote “to kill affirmative action in the public sphere.” They voted to end preferential treatment based on race, ethnicity, or gender. All preferential treatment based on those categories can be described as affirmative action, but not all affirmative action employs preferential treatment. This definitional issues was hotly debated in the Michigan campaign, and once again the Post’s self-described “staff writer” has parroted one side in a political debate without acknowledging or even seeming to recognize it.

As I’ve commented a number of times, it’s really interesting that defenders of affirmative action almost always insist that it does not rest on racial preference — until, that is, citizens rise up to abolish it, at which time they insist equally loudly that to abolish racial preference is to abolish affirmative action. Go figure.

Next, the self-described “staff writer” asserts that “affirmative action ... is meant to address current and historical inequities.” Really? That’s certainly not what the defenders of affirmative action at the University of Michigan argued in court in either Gratz or Grutter. They insisted their only rationale was “diversity.” Does the self-described “staff-writer” think they were lying? Disingenuous? Misinformed?

Finally, self-described “staff writer’s” self-described article quotes a number of opponents of the initiatives that would require colorblind racial equality. For example:

“As we feared, Connerly’s attack on equal opportunity in Michigan has metastasized,” said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. “We know that most Americans support equal opportunity. They know that diversity is good for business, good for the classroom and ultimately good for the country.”

Excuse me, but wouldn’t fairness (the Washington Post does believe in fairness in its self-described news articles, doesn’t it?) require the self-described “staff-writer” to indicate, at least once, that of course what Wade Henderson was talking about was “self-described equal opportunity”?

UPDATE [28 March]

David Nieporent makes an excellent point in his comment below:

the defenders of AA — and that includes the media — never talk about what AA is. They always change the subject and talk about what the motives of the people who implemented it are.

That is indeed true. Reporters and defenders of affirmative action (is there a difference?) almost always define or describe affirmative action in terms of their motives, goals, intents, purposes, almost never what it actually is or does. Thus they will say that it is an attempt to “level the playing field” or “provide equal opportunity”; they will not say that it is, say, an admissions or employment policy that gives “bonus points” based on race or that judges some applicants by lower standards based on their race.

And the converse is equally true: opponents of affirmative action are described as people who oppose “equal opportunity,” support “white privilege,” etc., rarely as people who oppose double (or triple) standards based on race. Their their motives, goals, intents, purposes are usually mentioned only when they are slandered (supporting white privilege, etc.).