Today in Michigan, voters face a choice on Proposal 2, which would add the following language to the state constitution: “The 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.”
One might think a law banning discrimination would be a triumph for civil rights. Instead, opponents have spent $3 million trying to defeat it, using some of the most low-down arguments of this low-down election year. Consider this ad running on Detroit radio:
“If you could have prevented 9/11 from ever happening . . . would you have? If you could have prevented Katrina from ever happening . . . what would you have done? On Nov. 7th there’s a national disaster headed for Michigan . . . the elimination of affirmative action. And on Nov. 7th there’s only one way to stop this disaster . . . by voting no on Proposal 2.”
We’re not against “negative” advertising, but to equate the abolition of racial and gender preferences to the damage done by terrorists and a hurricane seems a tad hyperbolic, not to mention dishonest.
Women’s groups are also in on the distortion. They’re using statewide ads to claim that ending affirmative action would lead to an end to women’s health clinics, programs to tutor girls in math and science, and funding for breast cancer treatment. There’s one problem with these scare tactics: The initiative doesn’t apply to health clinics or tutoring programs. Two states—California and Washington—have passed nearly identical initiatives, and there has been no negative effect on women’s opportunities.
This sentence pretty much sums the whole mess up:
Once upon a time, the goal of civil rights legislation was equal opportunity. But with that goal largely achieved, the proponents of racial preferences have now moved the goalposts to “diversity” for its own sake. This sets race above other qualities, which erodes public confidence in individual merit as opposed to group rights.
The “civil rights” and “equality” movements stopped being about those things a long time ago. Of late, they’re more about perpetuating victimhood for the sake of special treatment. These groups don’t want equal treatment for their members, they want preferential treatment. They don’t want things like race and gender to be erased from things like hiring and education decisions, they want it embraced. They want the race or gender of their people to matter so that they get a step up above everybody else.
If you need evidence of this, just look at the law they’re opposing in Michigan. “The 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.” That sounds like equality to me.
Too bad these “civil rights” and “equality” groups don’t really want that.