By a 2-1 vote, a panel of the Sixth Circuit has decided that Proposal 2, the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, an initiative approved by 58% of Michigan voters that amended the state constitution to prohibit state agencies from discriminating against or granting preferential treatment to anyone based on race, violates the 14th Amendment’s requirement of equal protection.
Really. The two-judge majority (both appointed by a Democratic president, with the dissent by a Republican appointee) actually held that depriving a racial minority of the ability to receive preferential treatment based on race discriminates against that minority based on race.
You can read the majority opinion and dissent here if you want to (in truth, the dissent is almost as depressing as the majority opinion simply because of necessity it was forced to take the majority opinion seriously), but you really don’t need to.
If you want to understand the essence of the majority opinion all you really need to read is Lewis Carroll’s Through The Looking Glass:
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’
Even the Ninth Circuit, which itself has not been above emulating Humpty Dumpty on a number of occasions, virtually laughed the identical argument out of court in rejecting a challenge to California’s Prop. 209, on which Michigan’s Prop. 2 was based, noting pointedly:
The Fourteenth Amendment, lest we lose sight of the forest for the trees, does not require what it barely permits…. It would be paradoxical to conclude that by adopting the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the voters of the State thereby had violated it.
Michigan has already announced that it will seek an en banc review of the panel’s decision, and it’s hard to believe that decision will stand. But it will long stand as a discomfiting and even unnerving reminder of the Orwellian (or Carrollian) manner the ACLU and the NAACP (plaintiffs in both the 9th and 6th Circuits, joined by BAMN in the latter), Democrats, and their judges now regard racial equality.
Victory! Justice is served.
http://www.thecobraslair.com/images/AFFIRMATIVE-ACTION-IN-MICHI.gif
Jennifer Gratz & Ward Connerly’s nasty, vicious war on Minority progress and opportunities for women has been thwarted once again. It must burn like a bad rash on a hot bleacher for those here at Discriminations who spent literally YEARS posting in support of Prop 2 and the Michigan case…the Roger Clegg’s and Chetly Zarko’s of the world.
LOL…
Somehow, even my cartoons aren’t enough to describe how I deeply I relish this moment.
–Cobra
Those of you trying to engage Cobra have your work cut out for you. Just click on his cartoon’s link to understand, fearfully, the galactic-class talent you’re up against.
After a long absence I’m glad to see Cobra (nice moniker, friendly and inclusive) is back with his usual generous spirit, always assuming the best of his adversaries, and displaying his typical good humor. It will be interesting to see if he remains in such fine spirits if this offensive and depressing panel decision has the short shelf life that many are predicting.
Here’s video of the winning plaintiff, By Any Means Necessary, in action, led by Shanta Driver, one of the victorious lawyers in this case:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRy74-8mtr8
BAMN obviously has superior protest techniques than your average Tea Party gathering.
You can find a lot of other neat things on You Tube, Mr. Sailer.
Steve Sailer interview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVLFr2niwjE
After your intellectualized “Jimmy-the-Greek” riff on Black athletes, you, in your own words, on camera…describe H.L. Mencken as your “idol.”
“”The Jews could be put down very plausibly as the most unpleasant race ever heard of. As commonly encountered, they lack many of the qualities that mark the civilized man: courage, dignity, incorruptibility, ease, confidence. They have vanity without pride, voluptuousness without taste, and learning without wisdom. Their fortitude, such as it is, is wasted upon puerile objects, and their charity is mainly a form of display.””
–H.L. Mencken from “Treatise on the Gods” (1930)
Really? Are you down with this, John? You can’t even find a Farrakhan quote on that level. But deeper still…Steve Sailer and John Rosenberg SHOULD on the merits, be diametrically OPPOSED.
John, you believe that race should NEVER be taken into account, whereas Sailer believes it should ALWAYS be. That’s the position of any good eugenicist (human-bio-diversity-LOL!) I can’t imagine John Rosenberg showing up on the dais of the “H.L. Mencken Club” seminar with Jared Taylor, Peter Brimelow or some of the other “tailored suit White supremacists” that haunt those events.
-Cobra
The language in the ruling about “minorities” sounds quaint to those of us in California. As a whole, there is no single identifiable majority group in the state. In fact, among those 18 and under Latinos are a majority.
We have a situation in California where government-sanctioned AA will now benefit a Latino majority, at the expense of white (whatever that means) and Asian “minorities.” Furthermore, Latino illegal aliens if given a future amnesty will further be eligible for AA preferences. I don’t see how this situation is any more acceptable or sustainable than pre-1960s preferences for WASPs.
Re “minorities” in California: revisionist has identified one of the many problems in the 6th Circuit opinion: it assumes that civil rights protections are meant for, and only for, not “minorities” but only certain selected minorities, blacks and Hispanics. What of Asians, who go unmentioned? What if, for example, Asians determined that it was in their interest, to their benefit, for race and ethnicity not to be taken into account and so heavily supported the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative? Why should their policy preference be valued less than the policy preference of blacks and Hispanics to receive preferences based on race and ethnicity? In short, once civil rights are seen as group rights — especially if viewed as group rights possessed only by certain favored groups — chaos follows.
Re Cobra’s view of Steve Sailer: Sailer actually admires H.L. Mencken? What a cad! Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if he also admires, say, Thomas Jefferson, a well-known slaveholder! For all I know he may not even share cobra’s disdain for historical figures who are not as perfect as himself.
revisionist writes:
“I don’t see how this situation is any more acceptable or sustainable than pre-1960s preferences for WASPs.”
How is this the same situation? WASPs were(are) in power and controlled American society, by an large due to the preferential treatment they received. Today, disenfranchised and historically disadvantaged minority groups are NOT in control of American Society.
revisionist writes:
“We have a situation in California where government-sanctioned AA will now benefit a Latino majority, at the expense of white (whatever that means) and Asian “minorities.”
That’s why your movement is doomed to eventual failure. To the eternal dismay of the Steve Sailers of the world, “Latino” is not a specific racial category. They can run the gamut of White, Black, Asian, Native American and Pacific Islander groups. So Affirmative Action for Latinos is NOT technically a “racial preference.” Take race out of this argument, your support dries up to neo-confederates, right-winged religious zealots and aryan academics in think tanks.
John writes:
“Re Cobra’s view of Steve Sailer: Sailer actually admires H.L. Mencken? What a cad! Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if he also admires, say, Thomas Jefferson, a well-known slaveholder!”
Spot on, John. I totally agree with you. I would be thoroughly SHOCKED if there were any White American slave-owners that Steve Sailer didn’t admire.
–Cobra
“To the eternal dismay of the Steve Sailers of the world, “Latino” is not a specific racial category. ”
Ever hear of the term “La Raza”? The definition of race is flexible (I believe Steve Sailer defines race as an extended family), but many Latinos in California embrace the solidarity concept of “Raza”. Bringing the subject back to government-ordered discrimination, AA for California Latinos has a definite racial basis.
BTW, the Mexican government minister Jose Vasconcelos, who classifed the majority Mestizo population of that country as a separate race, “La Raza”, was a Nazi sympathizer. Curiouser and curiouser. See
“Ese olvidado nazi mexicano de nombre José Vasconcelos”
http://www.istor.cide.edu/archivos/num_30/coincidencias.pdf
revisionist writes:
BTW, the Mexican government minister Jose Vasconcelos, who classifed the majority Mestizo population of that country as a separate race, “La Raza”, was a Nazi sympathizer.”
To paraphrase John Rosenberg re: Mencken–
“Nobody’s perfect.”
–Cobra
Wow. What an idiot. “Pacific Islander” can include Latinos? Huh. By the way, if you read the Proposition, it includes “national origin”, so the discussion of “latinos” is definitely apropos. Reading comprehension is fundamental!
(The folks on Guam will be particularly incensed by Cobra’s suggestion. They were very sensitive to any suggestion that their language was influenced in any way by Spanish.)
GWB writes:
“Wow. What an idiot. “Pacific Islander” can include Latinos?”
Well, that’s what three centuries of Spanish colonial rule will do for you. The Spanish East Indies…the Philippines–you’ve heard of those, right?
–Cobra
Why is Tom Brady in that cartoon?
I always draw Jennifer Gratz in a Tom Brady jersey. They both applied to Michigan at the same time. Brady was accepted…Gratz was waitlisted, despite having a higher high school GPA than the future Hall of Fame quarterback.
Gratz, to my knowledge, has NEVER engaged in any complaint, legal action, or political crusade over Tom Brady being accepted into Michigan before her, who was, by her own arguments, “less academically qualified.”
–Cobra
This is Bass Ackward and makes no sense… very allison in wonderland
Any word on the en banc review?