Duplicitous Anti-Equality Protesters

An article about the anti-equality protesters in Arizona has all the usual drivel we have come to expect from them — outraged (and outrageous) charges that the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative is a “fraud”; would be “a setback for civil rights”; etc. — but it is nevertheless noteworthy, for three reasons: 1) one of the misrepresentations from the anti-equality protesters is unintentionally but revealingly humorous; 2) one of the misrepresentations is perhaps the most egregious I’ve seen in the long, sordid history of the pro-preference crowd; and 3), and perhaps most astounding of all, one of the Arizona protesters actually said something that is almost true. I’ll take these in turn.

1. Shanta Driver, a “national spokeswoman” for BAMN, the violence-promoting pro-preference group whose official title is “Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, & Immigrant Rights and Fight For Equality By Any Means Necessary,” has been encountered here a number of times, spouting nonsense and doublespeak, promoting unruly, disruptive behavior, engaging in Driver-by attacks on equality, filing frivolous lawsuits that inevitably get dismissed by the courts, etc. Now, predictably, she’s shown up in Arizona to organize BAMN’s voter intimidation efforts there, only now she’s apparently trying to clean up her image. She is identified in the article (linked in first paragraph above) as representing “The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action.” Looks like the “… By Any Means Necessary” was conveniently discarded, temporarily, as too incendiary for Arizonans.

2. Mathew Whitaker, one of the Arizona pro-preference protesters, had the nerve (or perhaps merely the ignorance) to claim that voting for the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative

would be rolling back mechanisms, programs, procedures and policies that allow everyone regardless of race, regardless of gender, equal access to that which sustains us here in the state.

In short, Whitaker has given new meaning to the concept of duplicitous disingenuousness (unless,of course, he’s simply too dumb to know what he’s talking about). Accusing civil rights advocates of engage in fraud and misrepresentation, he asserts that prohibiting the state from discriminating against any individual based on race, ethnicity, or gender would eliminate programs that provide equal access to everyone “regardless of race, regardless, of gender.” News bulletin for Mr. Whitaker et. al.: it is the opponents, not the supporters, of the Arizona Ciivl Rights Initiative who regard official colorblindness (“regardless of race,” etc.) as racism, who want to preserve programs that discriminate against some and give preferential treatment to others based on race.

3. Whitaker, perhaps doing an imitation of the stopped clock that is right twice a day, did, uncharacteristically of BAMN protesters everywhere, say one thing that was almost true. He urged voters to look closely at the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative in order

to understand that what you are looking at is not necessarily a measure that has been put forth by people whose definition of civil rights is the same as yours.

Almost true, but not quite. That initiative is “put forth” by people whose definition of civil rights is indeed different from Whitaker’s and BAMN’s, but I’m confident it is a definition shared by most voters in Arizona, as it was by voters in California, Washington, and Michigan.