IS IT TIME TO END AFFIRMATIVE ACTION?
Posted in political on July 19th, 2006
This November, Michigan voters will be faced with a decision, whether of not to pass the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative that would effectively end affirmative action in government and Universities. This is not actually a new idea; California and Washington have already passed similar initiatives with mixed results, (depending on who you talk to.) Although I have always supported affirmative action, recent events have caused me to have mixed emotions on this issue.
In the early 1980’s I wrote an opinion column for a local newspaper on affirmative action. In it, I defended the use of affirmative action as a way of balancing out what I saw, and to some degree, still see, as the advantage of being white. I wrote then and still believe now, that people left on their own will hire people who most closely resemble themselves. At the time, black people and poor people were so synonymous that separating them didn’t make much sense. Black people were barely getting on their feet socially speaking. They hardly held any high positions in government and college campuses were damn near void of a black face. They didn’t own enough businesses to matter at all in terms of employment and you would have been hard pressed to find one black millionaire much less a billionaire. Times truly have changed.
We now have a society in America where black people are seeing the fruits of what affirmative action has brought them. Thanks to affirmative action, our colleges are kicking out black graduates in numbers never seen before in our history. In the halls of the University where I work, every year I see more and more minorities of every color. In fact, according to the U.S. Census Bureau more blacks than whites (27% vs. 26.6%) have some college education. America is truly becoming a diverse country. The end result of producing all these educated black people is more black businesses, more black millionaires and billionaires, and more black people in positions of power. In short, affirmative action has been a saving grace for black people. It’s no wonder they support it so passionately.
The results for other minorities through affirmative action is a little more questionable. The reason is that, for the most part, affirmative action offices in your University, or government, are run almost exclusively by blacks, for blacks. Blacks, having been the leaders in almost every indicator of poverty for so long, were of course, given the most attention by affirmative action. As this has slowly changed, (Hispanics lead blacks in this country in almost every poverty indicator now), affirmative action has been slow to change with it. Women have seen big advances in the years since affirmative action took place, but since they entered the workplace for reasons that had little to do with affirmative action and more to do with women’s rights groups, I feel that it’s a little like the rooster taking credit for the dawn for affirmative action to point at women as a success on their part. In fact, as the Supreme Court case Gratz vs. University of Michigan shows us, affirmative action as used by our Universities is perfectly willing to violate white women’s civil rights to advance other minorities agendas. (The University of Michigan was found to be violating the 14th Amendment rights of white women (and white men) by using a unconstitutional point system for their undergrad admissions. something they’ve never seen a reason to apologize for.) It could be argued therefore, that affirmative action, in its effort to balance the scales, is itself engaging in discrimination.
Affirmative action proponents are gearing up and forming groups throughout Michigan to battle the MCRI. The most vocal of these groups is BAMN, short for “By Any Means Necessary.” Now, for me, the name alone is reason enough to not support them. One has to wonder if they truly mean “Any Means.” Do they honestly condone the use of terrorism? Intimidation? Threats? Violence? It’s hard to say, but so far their actions have shown me that they will stop at nothing to support their agenda. Here’s a list of actions they deem justifiable; Disrupting a Dec. 2005 Board of Canvassers meeting by busing in High School kids and then yelling physical threats at the boards members, attempting to solicit Democrat Board of Canvas members to break the law and defy a judge’s order to put MCRI on the Nov. ballot and finally, accusing MRCI supporters of misrepresenting their cause when collecting signatures. Apparently BAMN thinks that black people are not smart enough to know what they are signing, or are too dumb to even check. It should be noted here that MCRI supporters turned in 508,000 signatures even though they only needed 317,757. To believe BAMN, you would have to believe nearly 2/5 of the people who signed didn’t know what they were signing.
At this point the issue becomes, should a group be able to block a vote by the people of Michigan simply because they disagree with the other side? I say no. Is this the kind of process you would want blocking your issue? The University of Michigan along with the city of Ann Arbor and politicians on both sides of the aisle seem afraid to label this for what it clearly is, an attempt to thwart the will of the people. For this reason I am leaning toward supporting the MCRI stance on university affirmative action.
One thing that is important to know about affirmative action at the University level, is that we will find a way to recruit minorities anyway. Universities are very left-leaning. Since the issue has come up, my university is already making plans to circumvent any possible new rules. Affirmative Action offices are already renaming themselves to something that sounds more benign, even though all the same people work in the office. Instead of using race, we will simply target school districts that are mostly black or areas that are poor. Affirmative action will live on, just in a slightly different form. No longer will the poor white kid who lives in the ghetto along with his black and Hispanic counterparts be refused the help he needs, nor will the wealthy son of a black or Hispanic businessman get help he neither needs nor deserves. As far as women in universities are concerned, they now constitute the majority of students anyway, so it seems absurd that we should be recruiting any majority.
The one part of the MCRI that I don’t agree with is the ban on using affirmative action in government hiring. Unfortunately, blacks and Hispanics are still having a hard time getting their unemployment rates down closer to where whites are. There are a lot of reasons for this and regrettably, racism is still one of them. Government jobs account for a large portion of the decent jobs that blacks in particular get. I’m not convinced that we’ve leveled the playing field just yet, so maybe we (whites) should consider that, while it’s still wrong to tell someone that they can’t have a job because they’re white, it may be the only way to assure blacks some good jobs.
I’m still leaving my mind open enough to allow that I could be won over to either side, but if the leftists continue to try to squelch open and free debate they will lose my vote. In a recent Ann Arbor pre-election position forum, 18 Democrats running for mayor, city council, and Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners couldn’t find one issue they disagreed on, including this one. Apparently they all support diversity of color, gender, and sexual orientation, but like the group BAMN, don’t support diversity of thought. H.C.
Posted in political on July 19th, 2006
This November, Michigan voters will be faced with a decision, whether of not to pass the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative that would effectively end affirmative action in government and Universities. This is not actually a new idea; California and Washington have already passed similar initiatives with mixed results, (depending on who you talk to.) Although I have always supported affirmative action, recent events have caused me to have mixed emotions on this issue.
In the early 1980’s I wrote an opinion column for a local newspaper on affirmative action. In it, I defended the use of affirmative action as a way of balancing out what I saw, and to some degree, still see, as the advantage of being white. I wrote then and still believe now, that people left on their own will hire people who most closely resemble themselves. At the time, black people and poor people were so synonymous that separating them didn’t make much sense. Black people were barely getting on their feet socially speaking. They hardly held any high positions in government and college campuses were damn near void of a black face. They didn’t own enough businesses to matter at all in terms of employment and you would have been hard pressed to find one black millionaire much less a billionaire. Times truly have changed.
We now have a society in America where black people are seeing the fruits of what affirmative action has brought them. Thanks to affirmative action, our colleges are kicking out black graduates in numbers never seen before in our history. In the halls of the University where I work, every year I see more and more minorities of every color. In fact, according to the U.S. Census Bureau more blacks than whites (27% vs. 26.6%) have some college education. America is truly becoming a diverse country. The end result of producing all these educated black people is more black businesses, more black millionaires and billionaires, and more black people in positions of power. In short, affirmative action has been a saving grace for black people. It’s no wonder they support it so passionately.
The results for other minorities through affirmative action is a little more questionable. The reason is that, for the most part, affirmative action offices in your University, or government, are run almost exclusively by blacks, for blacks. Blacks, having been the leaders in almost every indicator of poverty for so long, were of course, given the most attention by affirmative action. As this has slowly changed, (Hispanics lead blacks in this country in almost every poverty indicator now), affirmative action has been slow to change with it. Women have seen big advances in the years since affirmative action took place, but since they entered the workplace for reasons that had little to do with affirmative action and more to do with women’s rights groups, I feel that it’s a little like the rooster taking credit for the dawn for affirmative action to point at women as a success on their part. In fact, as the Supreme Court case Gratz vs. University of Michigan shows us, affirmative action as used by our Universities is perfectly willing to violate white women’s civil rights to advance other minorities agendas. (The University of Michigan was found to be violating the 14th Amendment rights of white women (and white men) by using a unconstitutional point system for their undergrad admissions. something they’ve never seen a reason to apologize for.) It could be argued therefore, that affirmative action, in its effort to balance the scales, is itself engaging in discrimination.
Affirmative action proponents are gearing up and forming groups throughout Michigan to battle the MCRI. The most vocal of these groups is BAMN, short for “By Any Means Necessary.” Now, for me, the name alone is reason enough to not support them. One has to wonder if they truly mean “Any Means.” Do they honestly condone the use of terrorism? Intimidation? Threats? Violence? It’s hard to say, but so far their actions have shown me that they will stop at nothing to support their agenda. Here’s a list of actions they deem justifiable; Disrupting a Dec. 2005 Board of Canvassers meeting by busing in High School kids and then yelling physical threats at the boards members, attempting to solicit Democrat Board of Canvas members to break the law and defy a judge’s order to put MCRI on the Nov. ballot and finally, accusing MRCI supporters of misrepresenting their cause when collecting signatures. Apparently BAMN thinks that black people are not smart enough to know what they are signing, or are too dumb to even check. It should be noted here that MCRI supporters turned in 508,000 signatures even though they only needed 317,757. To believe BAMN, you would have to believe nearly 2/5 of the people who signed didn’t know what they were signing.
At this point the issue becomes, should a group be able to block a vote by the people of Michigan simply because they disagree with the other side? I say no. Is this the kind of process you would want blocking your issue? The University of Michigan along with the city of Ann Arbor and politicians on both sides of the aisle seem afraid to label this for what it clearly is, an attempt to thwart the will of the people. For this reason I am leaning toward supporting the MCRI stance on university affirmative action.
One thing that is important to know about affirmative action at the University level, is that we will find a way to recruit minorities anyway. Universities are very left-leaning. Since the issue has come up, my university is already making plans to circumvent any possible new rules. Affirmative Action offices are already renaming themselves to something that sounds more benign, even though all the same people work in the office. Instead of using race, we will simply target school districts that are mostly black or areas that are poor. Affirmative action will live on, just in a slightly different form. No longer will the poor white kid who lives in the ghetto along with his black and Hispanic counterparts be refused the help he needs, nor will the wealthy son of a black or Hispanic businessman get help he neither needs nor deserves. As far as women in universities are concerned, they now constitute the majority of students anyway, so it seems absurd that we should be recruiting any majority.
The one part of the MCRI that I don’t agree with is the ban on using affirmative action in government hiring. Unfortunately, blacks and Hispanics are still having a hard time getting their unemployment rates down closer to where whites are. There are a lot of reasons for this and regrettably, racism is still one of them. Government jobs account for a large portion of the decent jobs that blacks in particular get. I’m not convinced that we’ve leveled the playing field just yet, so maybe we (whites) should consider that, while it’s still wrong to tell someone that they can’t have a job because they’re white, it may be the only way to assure blacks some good jobs.
I’m still leaving my mind open enough to allow that I could be won over to either side, but if the leftists continue to try to squelch open and free debate they will lose my vote. In a recent Ann Arbor pre-election position forum, 18 Democrats running for mayor, city council, and Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners couldn’t find one issue they disagreed on, including this one. Apparently they all support diversity of color, gender, and sexual orientation, but like the group BAMN, don’t support diversity of thought. H.C.
2 comments:
Until we start seeing the same classes and the same resources in Flint schools as we do in Grand Blanc schools, women and men making the same (or close to the same) $$ for the same job, and more men in the nursing profession, an Affirmative Action-less society is a joke.
I agree Dre,
The question is; is basing it on race the only way to fix the problem. I'm 100% behind helping people who came out of the same f***ed-up type of school system as me get ahead. If they happen to be mostly black, or Hispanic, or whatever, so be it. That there's a handicap that comes with growing up poor, I think, is undeniable. I've always thought that if you could get the schools (K-12) on the same level, the rest would fix itself. But, having said that, there's a lot of other issues that have to be addressed as well to get there. Single Moms, Absent Dads, No child support, Drugs, Violence, lack of personal responsibility and even hopelessness all play a part. I'm hoping we will simply redirect our mission to help those disenfranchised, and not walk away. I've already heard some plans by the Universities on how to do this without A.A. Solutions can be found, don't assume all is lost. There's still a lot of concerned people out there that are energized to not let the poor down. Thanks as always for helping me get all sides out there.
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