By Diversity on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 at 04:28 PM
This writer presents a chilling attack on diversity and inclusion. Please read it and share your views:
The Diversity Taboo
January 26, 2004
By Heather Mac Donald
A RECENT PSEUDO-SCANDAL at the Justice Department is yet another depressing reminder of intractable racial taboos--although not the kind we usually hear about from hand-wringing pundits and civil-rights scolds.
At the end of October, the New York Times accused the Justice Department of covering up a study critical of its "diversity" hiring and management. The department had posted the study--a $360,000 piece of boilerplate from the diversity-consulting industry--on its website. About half the text had been very visibly blacked out. Among the redacted portions, gleefully reported on the Times's front page, were such standard "diversity" findings as the fact that more minority lawyers than white ones perceive "stereotyping, harassment and racial tension" in their workplace.
For the Times and likeminded Bush administration critics, the story was a glorious twofer: Not only was Attorney General John Ashcroft, that scourge of civil rights, abusing his minority employees, but he was trying to conceal it. Senator Edward Kennedy blasted the department for ignoring "diversity" issues. Representatives John Conyers Jr. and Jerrold Nadler issued a demand, in self-professed "outrage," that the Justice Department's inspector general investigate Diversitygate.
This scandal was a fake. The missing portions of the diversity study (later exhumed by a computer sleuth) had been redacted for a perfectly good reason: A rule in the Freedom of Information Act exempts advisory and "predecisional" material from disclosure. The deletions contained positive information about the department, just as the posted text contained "negative" findings, such as the higher attrition rate of minority hires.
But there was a scandal in the episode, albeit a longstanding one: the enduring charade about minority underachievement in the workplace. Every month, businesses and government agencies lavish vast sums on diversity "consultants" to come up with every reason other than the correct one--the skills gap--for why they do not have a proportional number of black and Hispanic employees. And, just as regularly, elite opinion-makers hold up the results of such sham studies as proof of American racism.
The Justice Department's recent diversity study, produced by KPMG Consulting, was a classic of the genre. Here was page after page of complicated graphs calculating to the hundredth of a percentage point the ratio of black, Hispanic, and female attorneys in every possible position within the department. Here was the disparagement of the white male "dominant culture norms," along with the call to "be more creative about defining qualifications" (i.e., to gut standards for minorities). Here was the inevitable push for tying the pay of managers to their promotion of minorities. But, above all else, here was the scrupulous, all-encompassing silence on every page of the document about why this futile exercise was undertaken in the first place: the dearth of qualified minority attorneys to fill those minutely tabulated Justice Department slots.
The real missing data from the Justice diversity study are these: In 2002, only 29 black applicants were qualified without a racial boost for a top-ten law school (from which the elite branches of the Justice Department recruit), compared with 4,500 college seniors nationwide, as Jonathan Kay has reported in Commentary. The situation was identical a decade ago: Only 24 black applicants met the academic requirements for the top 10 percent of law schools in 1991, according to Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom. Naturally, those schools were not about to let the lack of preparedness among minority applicants stand in the way of demonstrating the schools' high-minded embrace of racial balance. They admitted 420 blacks to their first-year classes anyway, thus ensuring that nearly all would start out with a disadvantage compared with their white and Asian peers.
The results of such racial double standards are predictable: Over a fifth of affirmative-action law students from the 1991 cohort, for example, dropped out. With few exceptions, black students post grades near the bottom of their class. As a result, almost none qualify for law review. The bar exam failure rate for affirmative-action beneficiaries is far higher than for merit-based admits. Nearly a third of the 1991 quota admits failed after three attempts, a rate seven times that of whites, according to the Thernstroms.
The racial charade requires that law-school administrators express deep puzzlement about such facts, even though their own admissions policies produced the disparity. The dean of Vanderbilt Law School, Kent D. Syverud, recently told the Chronicle of Higher Education that the lack of minority representation on the school's law journals is "one of the biggest challenges I've faced as dean." Yet Syverud defended the use of racial preferences in law-school admissions in the recent Supreme Court affirmative action case Grutter v. Bollinger, so he is merely reaping what he has sown. True to form, many law schools, like New York University and the University of Pennsylvania, have rejiggered traditional law-review requirements to guarantee the presence of face-saving blacks and Hispanics on the review masthead.
The genius of the diversity charade is to turn a supply problem into a demand problem. The reason the Justice Department does not have a proportional sampling of black and Hispanic attorneys is simple: The numbers just aren't there. But the diversity industry tells us that
the real reason behind the lack of racial proportionality is demand: Employers are not trying hard enough to recruit minority employees, and when they do hire them, they subject them to racism--which can be rooted out only by more diversity-industry interventions.
A fail-safe source for proving work-site racism is the minority employee survey. In 1990, New York's most exclusive law firms noticed that they didn't have many black partners. The obvious explanation--inadequate supply of partnership material--was taboo from the start. So New York's legal titans began the arduous process of ignoring the obvious. Working through the bar association, they hived off into a decade-long series of diversity committees and subcommittees, among whose initiatives was a poll of minority associates about their work experiences. Eureka! Here was an explanation for low minority headcount that the firms could live with: According to the subcommittee on minority retention, over 60 percent of black lawyers reported "race-related barriers to their professional development." Similarly, the recent Justice Department diversity study found that "significantly more" minorities perceived racism on the job than whites.
Now what is the cause of this perception? It may of course be the case that these elite employers, despite their years of schooling in the country's most liberal institutions and despite their strenuous efforts to find as many black employees as they can, are in fact racist. But here is an alternative possibility: Affirmative-action beneficiaries, having been admitted to organizations for which they are significantly less qualified than their peers, experience difficulties performing up to the norm and attribute those difficulties to their environment. Find an honest partner at a high-powered law firm, for example, and he will acknowledge, only on deep background, that many black associates struggle mightily with legal writing. But racial prejudice is the easy culprit--and little wonder. Minority students are fed a steady diet of victimology in colleges and law schools. Critical Race Studies courses in law schools, for example, maintain that legal rationality silences the minority voice. So, it is hardly surprising that overmatched minority attorneys blame bias for their plight.
The diversity charade's most bizarre feature is this: Employers and universities would rather take the rap for racism than tell the truth about minority underperformance. After the poll showing that black New York attorneys blame their firms' bigotry for their lack of advancement, the most that those firms would meekly say in their own defense was that such "perceptions are not based on the animus that we normally associate with racial discrimination." An understatement, if there ever was one.
Far from possessing "animus" against blacks, New York's most prestigious firms, like the law elite everywhere, spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on diversity recruiting, diversity support groups, and diversity social functions like the party hosted last fall by the firm Paul Weiss. Young minority law associates from across the city were invited. The fancy Judson Grill was rented out, John Payton, the black attorney who argued Grutter spoke (gloating about the victory), and guests left with goody bags containing diversity paperweights, copies of the Grutter opinion, and a magazine called Diversity Inc. with articles on how to tell if firms value--you guessed it--diversity.
But faced with the choice of copping to bias or explaining the difficulty of finding qualified minority applicants, there's not a prominent organization that won't fall on its sword as a racist. (The Jayson Blair fiasco at the New York Times offered a variant on this formula: The Times preferred to let its journalistic standards be impugned rather than admit that it had overlooked reporter Blair's patent failings because of his race.) And so the New York Bar, skewered by its black associates, dutifully ordered itself into diversity training and set itself ever more rigorous hiring and promotion goals, as if its members hadn't already been frantically trying to find and promote black attorneys. Likewise, the Justice Department, accused by its minority employees of "harassment and stereotyping" and accused by the press of not hiring and promoting enough minorities, has merely hung its head and promised to do better through new undertakings like a loan repayment program and more "equitable" assignment of cases.
Although an event sometimes forces momentary honesty about the skills gap, the racial taboo always triumphs in the end. While covering the recent Supreme Court affirmative-action challenges, for example, even the liberal media could hardly avoid mentioning the 200-point SAT gap between whites and Asians, on the one hand, and blacks and Hispanics on the other. But those moments pass without a trace, and the New York Times and other press outlets quickly go back to reporting on the underrepresentation of minorities in this or that organization as a sign of bias, as the Wall Street Journal did in November, informing readers that "high turnover among people of color" suggests the employer does not value diversity.
The drive of elite institutions to fill their token roster of minorities, no matter the costs to the tokens or to their own standards, only perpetuates the racial taboo by giving a false impression. The smattering of black and Hispanic faces on the bench, in law and medical school classes, and on the brochures of selective colleges makes it harder for the public to grasp how severely minorities lag behind the norm in reading and math. Worse, preferences keep the institutions that use them on the sidelines of educational reform and cultural change. Remove their ability to practice racial window-dressing, however, and many would try to actually shrink the skills gap rather than just cover it up.
The only time the University of California system sought to systematically improve California's abysmal schools was after the U.C. Regents, in 1995, banned the use of race in admissions. In response, university administrators launched a massive outreach program into high schools and elementary schools to prepare minority students for competitive enrollment. Had the Supreme Court struck down educational preferences this summer, many colleges, law schools, law firms, and businesses would have been forced into a similar crusade--at least until the next dodge for covertly reinstating quotas had emerged.
In her recent decision upholding affirmative action, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor gave colleges and law schools 25 years to continue papering over the racial skills gap. Expect another 25 years of inaction on minority skills, more pseudo-scandals about low minority representation, and an ever fatter diversity industry laughing all the way to the bank.
Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor at the Manhattan Institute's City Journal and the author of "Are Cops Racist?"
By Diversity on Thursday, September 13, 2007 at 10:08 PM
By Diversity on Monday, August 27, 2007 at 07:25 PM
Affirmative-action foe Ward Connerly makes an easy sell to the public by calling for "equal opportunity" and a "colorblind society," a distortion of civil-rights language that has duped the public into banning affirmative action in public education, employment and contracting in
But this time, he's run into a roadblock in
If these initiatives are approved by voters in these states, "equality" is unlikely to be the outcome. The anti-affirmative-action camp intentionally uses vague language to confuse voters who might be turned off by a proposed ban on affirmative action in their state. Fortunately, language for ballot measures to amend state constitutions must first be approved by the state officials, such as the attorney general and secretary of state, which led to a three-year delay in
Controversy in
Following the modus operandi of Connerly's national campaign, the so-called Missouri Civil Rights Initiative (MoCRI), proposed language that didn't once mention the term "affirmative action" in a ballot measure that would ban it from public employment, education and contracting if the public says yes. It said: "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." Read it here.
Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan and Attorney General Jay Nixon say no. They changed the language to reflect the actual purpose of the ballot initiative, which is to eliminate affirmative action, and to include a second provision that would allow "race preferences" where affirmative-action programs are required to be eligible for federal funding. Read the state's version.
Connerly lambasted the state officials for allegedly trying to keep the initiative off the 2008 ballot, calling it an "abuse of constitutional office." MoCRI filed an appeal to overrule the state's ballot language.
But the American Association for Affirmative Action (AAAA), which recently launched a Task Force on Equity in the States to fight Connerly's machine, approves of Carnahan's move and wrote a letter to the editor of the Kansas City Star to that effect. The letter highlights the deceptive wording on the
"We think she's doing the right thing, and those who seek equity should do so with clean hands. Some of the draft initiatives in other states were simply misleading," AAAA Executive Director Shirley Wilcher told DiversityInc.
AAAA is one of many organizations committed to fighting Connerly and his crew, yet a recent Diverse Issues in Higher Education article suggests most civil-rights organizations have given up hope of defeating him, in light of two recent Supreme Court decisions on voluntary school integration that affirmative-action foes have used for momentum by manipulating public interpretation to suit their agenda. This only adds fuel to Connerly's argument that we have reached the "end of an era."
Wilcher disputes the conclusions of the Diverse Issues in Higher
Education article. "They didn't go far enough to interview people who really are concerned," she says. "There are groups, I understand, at least in Missouri, who are beginning to gather to discuss their response."
The campaigns are still in the early stages, which may explain the lack of public outcry.
"People are assessing what happened in Michigan, and they're probably tailoring their efforts on the local level, depending upon where people stand on this issue," says Wilcher. "The states are different; their economic situations are different and they have to develop their strategies accordingly. I'm not [in Missouri], but I sense that there's more happening than is obvious ... I don't think there's enough evidence that people have given up just because some particularly older or younger folks just don't understand it. It's far too premature."
What Happens Next?
Twenty-three states allow voter-approved ballot initiatives to amend state constitutions. MoCRI says it needs 139,000 signatures to get the measure on the 2008 ballot, which is about 3.3 percent of the state's voting population, most of which is white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey. It's no coincidence that most of Connerly's current campaigns are in states where white people are disproportionately represented compared with the nation and blacks are drastically underrepresented. (See chart below.)
The initiatives in the five states are staffed with a who's who of prominent conservative activists, including Linda Chavez, president and founder of the anti-affirmative-action Center for Equal Opportunity, who is honorary co-chair of the Colorado initiative. John Uhlmann, a wealthy Kansas City businessman who gave $190,000 to Connerly's failed efforts to pass a 2003 bill that would have prohibited state and local government from classifying people on the basis of "race, ethnicity, color or national origin" in California, is honorary chair of the MoCRI. Uhlmann co-founded a politicized media group that became known for producing and airing controversial radio ads with "reverse reparations" messages aimed at African-American communities during the 2002 election cycle.
Connerly says all five campaigns are "going extremely well," reports Cybercast News. With more than a year to go before the initiatives would appear on state ballots, civil-rights leaders and state supporters of affirmative action should use the time wisely to educate the public about the real threat posed by the initiative and how to interpret the misleading messages of the campaign, says Wilcher.
While many factors are still at play, such as "how the language is drafted, whether its challenged beforehand, the will of the people," Wilcher says "what's important is for the media to clearly help us to educate America on what affirmative action is and is not."
Affirmative action is not a "black/white" issue, for one thing, says Wilcher, who often reads these comments, primarily from white women.
"The beneficiaries are far broader," she explains, citing the people with disabilities and veterans in the Department of Labor who have also benefited from affirmative action. "The first thing we need to do is educate. Given the demographics of the future, if we don't have affirmative action, we'll have to reinvent it."
Wilcher emphatically disagrees. "It's not fair to say people have walked away from this," she says. "People are taking different approaches. I think we're far from over."
By Diversity on Monday, July 23, 2007 at 11:32 PM
Feel free to provide your comments or offer constructive input on the value of diversity and inclusion. Feel free to include links and websites.
thanks.
By Diversity on Monday, June 25, 2007 at 07:31 PM
Affirmative Action: Ballot
Colorado is gearing up for a battle over affirmative action, as an effort known as the “Colorado civil rights initiative” is being led by Ward Connerly, chairman of the Sacramento, Calif.- based American Civil Rights Institute. Connerly also spearheaded Prop. 209 in California nad the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative which was passed last November. The Colordao campaign began in April and on June 20,
Ramey argued that among opponents' chief concerns was that "preferential treatment" was not adequately defined, and that it could possibly extend to college diversity recruitment, women's health care programs and official notices in a language other than English. Opponents have until June 27 to file an appeal.
“Affirmative action fight likely result of proposal,” Rocky Mountain News, 6/21/07;
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5595547,00.html
By Diversity on Monday, June 18, 2007 at 07:46 PM
A new report published by the Campaign for
The report is online at: http://mediamatters.org/static/pdf/progressive_majority.pdf
By Diversity on Friday, June 15, 2007 at 07:03 PM
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) appointed state Rep. Leon Drolet, a Republican who led Ward Connerly's campaign to end affirmative action in
How can this be? The Michigan Department of Civil Rights, which is a state agency and has no connection to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, vehemently disapproves. In a scathing denouncement of Drolet's nomination, they wrote the following:
"In a state with such a rich history of civil rights and union activism, it is most disappointing that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights chose a representative with such a shallow civil rights resume. By selecting a candidate with a one-issue civil rights platform at odds with every established civil rights organization, the U.S. Commission has all but erased its credibility as a proponent for civil rights."
Read more about him at his website:
http://www.leonforliberty.com/
By Diversity on Monday, May 14, 2007 at 04:59 PM
By Diversity on Thursday, May 3, 2007 at 09:04 PM
From: Wilkepedia:
Wardell Connerly (born June 15, 1939) is a former University of California Regent, political activist, and businessman. He is also the founder and the chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, a national non-profit organization in opposition to racial and gender preferences. [1]. He is considered to be the man behind
Wardell Anthony Connerly was born June 15, 1939, in Leesville, Louisiana. Connerly has stated he is one-fourth black, with the rest a mix of Irish, French, and Choctaw. His father, Roy Connerly, left the household when Ward was 2, and his mother died when Ward was 4. The young Connerly went to live first with an aunt and uncle and then a grandmother. He attended Sacramento State College, eventually receiving a bachelor of arts with honors in political science in 1962. While in college, Connerly was student body president and actively involved with Delta Phi Omega, later becoming an honorary member of Sigma Phi Epsilon Fraternity. During his college years, Connerly was active in campaigning against housing discrimination and helped to get a bill passed by the state legislature banning the practice. After college, he worked for a number of state agencies and Assembly committees, including the
Connerly is a member of the Rotary Club of Sacramento, California, and has been inducted as a lifetime member into the California Building Industry Hall of Fame.
After his appointment to the
In 1994, a movement started by a group of academics had begun with the intent to get a ballot measure passed banning these types of programs in admissions and hiring by any state public employer, school, or contractor. Connerly had been hesitant to join the movement because he claimed he was afraid of reprisals against his family and business but eventually by the end of 1995 became the chairman of the California Civil Rights Initiative Campaign and helped get the initiative on the California ballot as Proposition 209. It passed by a 54% majority, despite attempts to defeat it from groups such as the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller foundations, the ACLU, and the California Teacher's Association. Connerly, in 1997, formed the American Civil Rights Institute to take their cause nationwide. Connerly first decided to support a similar ballot measure in
In 2003, Connerly returned to the political spotlight in
Following the 2003 Supreme Court rulings in Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger, Connerly was invited to
Ward Connerly sees himself as a Republican with a libertarian philosophy. Despite his close political relationship with former California Governor Pete Wilson and their agreement on the question of Affirmative Action, he spearheaded efforts to grant domestic partner benefits to gay and lesbian couples in all state universities against
Further, Connerly's support for domestic partner benefits earned him the ire of the conservative advocacy groups Family Research Council and Traditional Values Coalition.[3]. Robert Knight, Director of Cultural Studies at the Family Research Council, had this to say regarding Connerly, "no true conservative would equate homosexual households with marriages, because we believe that without marriage and family as paramount values, hell will break loose."
On May 8, 1995, two years after he went public with his anti-affirmative action views, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Connerly had taken advantage of a minority preference program on multiple occasions in the 1990s. The article was based on the paper's review of the records of California's State Energy Commission which showed that Connerly had listed his firm, Connerly & Associates, as a minority-owned firm, and that Connerly's firm received more than $1 million in state government contracts. The article included excerpts of an interview with Connerly in which he admitted that he only participated in the minority preference program to comply with state law [4]. However, the Chronicle published a correction on May 18, 1995, stating that their original source had erred and that Connerly's firm had not been registered as minority-owned at the time the State Energy Commission contract was awarded [5].
As Connerly pointed out in a story published by the Associated Press on May 9, 1995, due to the state's requirement that 15 percent of state contracts be given to minority-owned firms, he would have been placed in the position of having "to find a minority to turn over 15 percent of a contract which has an 8 percent profit at best." [6]
On July 9, 1997, Connerly's advocacy organization, the American Civil Rights Institute, expressed disappointment with the federal government's decision to reject the addition of a multiracial category on the Census and other government forms that collect racial data [7]. This press release was the beginning of Connerly's alliance with prominent members of what has become known as the multiracial movement. Prior to spearheading the Racial Privacy Initiative in
Connerly's opposition to affirmative action has generated controversy. Connerly believes affirmative action is a form of racism and that people can achieve success without preferential treatment in college enrollment or in employment. His critics contend that he fails to recognize the problems resulting from past racism, and that he fails to recognize that affirmative action programs can overcome the residual effects of past discrimination on people of minorities[citation needed].
The Detroit-based pro-affirmative action group By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) claims that Connerly, as CEO of Connerly & Associates, Inc., his Sacramento based real estate corporation, has benefitted financially from affirmative action programs in contracting, a claim that is supported by the May 8, 1995 article in the San Francisco Chronicle (discussed above). What BAMN has failed to disclose is that the State of
BAMN also claims that as a spokesman for the American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI) and the American Civil Rights Coalition (ACRC), Connerly earned as much as $400,000, by which BAMN questions Connerly's true motives. BAMN seeks a repeal of Proposition 209 and a return to affirmative action programs, especially in campus admissions. BAMN has recently opposed Connerly's efforts to put the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI)on the 2006 Michigan Ballot, and recently disrupted a Michigan Board of Canvassers meeting by loudly protesting and overturning a table [9].
Connerly's multiracial identity and views on affirmative action have led to him being labeled a "self-hating black" by some of his critics. In 1995, former State Senator Diane Watson said about him, "He's married to a white woman. He wants to be white. He wants a colorless society. He has no ethnic pride. He doesn't want to be black."[1][2]
Connerly has also been accused of hypocrisy for supporting domestic partner benefits for gay couples while opposing affirmative action. Connerly's supporters point out that this is not contradictory: he opposes discrimination, whether it is against gays, or any racial, religious, or ethnic group. In this regard, Connerly disparages the term "reverse" discrimination. To Connerly and supporters, racial discrimination is indistinguishable, regardless of which racial or ethnic group is the target[citation needed].
Another controversy arose after publication of Connerly's autobiography. Relatives have claimed his accounts of an impoverished childhood were exaggerated or simply false. Connerly's aunt claims his account is accurate. Pooley claims that relatives who contradicted Connerly’s anecdotes about his poor childhood are lying because they disagree with his politics.[citation needed]
Connerly has made controversial remarks regarding racial segregation on several occasions including the following:
On a CNN interview in December 2002 he said "Supporting segregation need not be racist. One can believe in segregation and believe in equality of the races," in response to a question regarding former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott.
He told the San Francisco Chronicle in September of 2003 "I don't care whether they are segregated or not . . . kids need to be learning, and I place more value on these kids getting educated than I do on whether we have some racial balancing or not." regarding whether his Proposition 54 could derail school integration efforts in California public schools[10].
Firelight Media interviewed Connerly for their documentary video "Arise: The Battle Over Affirmative Action" in which he comments; "If the Ku Klux Klan thinks that equality is right, God bless them," Connerly says. "Thank them for finally reaching the point where logic and reason are being applied, instead of hate."
Connerly issued a written statement clarifying his earlier remarks regarding a favorable tone towards the Ku Klux Klan's support for his
From BAMN:
University of California Regent Ward Connerly is the leading spokesperson for the well-financed, corporate-backed, far-right-wing national campaign to end affirmative action and to rollback the gains our society has made towards integration. He is president of the "American Civil Rights Institute" (ACRI) and "American Civil Rights Coalition" (ACRC), which spend millions of dollars on ballot initiatives and legal actions to create separate and unequal social conditions.
By Diversity on Monday, April 30, 2007 at 06:05 PM
The downloadable document has lots of good information about the legal and diversity ramifications of the University of Michigan decision.
http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/diversitycollaborative/acc-div_next-generation.pdf
By Diversity on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 at 03:42 PM
Several prominent critics of affirmative action announced in
The
A group calling itself the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative plans to hold a news conference tomorrow in
Ward Connerly, chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, plans to appear at each of this week’s news conferences and is advising the state organizations on their campaigns. In an interview today, he said the
Mr. Connerly said he expected each of the state campaigns to encounter a distinct set of challenges, but was confident that they would succeed based on the results of last fall’s election in Michigan. There, 58 percent of voters approved a constitutional amendment banning the use of affirmative-action preferences by public colleges and other state and local agencies, even though the measure was strongly opposed by business and religious leaders, organized labor, and civil-rights groups, and had little organized support. “I can’t see anything being tougher than it was in
By Diversity on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 at 03:37 PM
Measure could be the hot-button issue of '08 election cycle
By David Montero, Rocky Mountain News
April 24, 2007
In its current form, it's just 37 words long, and if it is approved by the Legislative Council on Thursday, it could become the hot-button issue of the 2008 election in Colorado.
Sponsors of their self-described "civil rights initiative" launched their campaign at the Brown Palace Hotel on Monday in hopes of dismantling affirmative action in government, affecting everything from admissions to state universities to contractors submitting bids on government projects.
Flanked by Sen. Dave Schultheis and Rep. Kent Lambert, both Colorado Springs Republicans, one of the faces of the anti-affirmative action movement spoke about moving toward a colorblind society and said that the existence of affirmative action laws actually promote - rather than eliminate - race bias.
That face was Ward Connerly, chairman of the Sacramento-based American Civil Rights Institute.
Connerly, who has spent years pushing the issue, said Colorado shouldn't promote discrimination and asserted that the ballot measure "goes to the heart of who we are as a country."
He also said it was time to end what he called "double standards" for ethnic groups.
"What we're about to do - what we're setting upon a course to do - is to bring a single standard to every government agency and every village and hamlet in this country," Connerly said.
"That's what the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative is about," he said. "Passing this, the people will be joining those bluest of blue states - California, Washington, Michigan - all of which passed that language."
But Dennis Parker, director of the American Civil Liberties Union racial justice program, said race is still a major issue in America and cited the government's response to Hurricane Katrina as an example of how far society is from being colorblind.
"The significance of Katrina laid bare the fault in the argument that race doesn't matter," Parker said. "It was hard to look at that experience and say race doesn't matter in America."
The measure still has several steps to go through before it can appear on the 2008 ballot.
It is among 30 prospective ballot measures filed so far in the 2007-2008 cycle. After being heard by the Legislative Council, the measure must be approved by the Colorado secretary of state and backers then must obtain about 76,000 valid petition signatures.
Text of the ballot measure
Ballot "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."
monterod@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5236
By Diversity on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 at 05:54 PM
By Diversity on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 10:00 PM
The Christian Science Monitor reports that the Ku Klux Klan is emerging from obscurity on the issue of immigration, harkening back to its nativist origins. A new report by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) says that "due to the successful exploitation of hot-button issues [the Klan has seen] a surprising and troubling resurgence."
Christian Science Monitor, 2/9/07; http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0209/p02s02-ussc.html
By Diversity on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 at 08:31 PM
By Diversity on Friday, January 26, 2007 at 07:31 PM
With Michigan's new ban on affirmative action going into effect, and similar ballot initiatives looming in other states, many public universities are scrambling to find race-blind ways to attract more blacks and Hispanics.
At Wayne State University Law School in Detroit, a new admissions policy, without mentioning race, allows officials to consider factors like living on an Indian reservation or in mostly black Detroit, or overcoming discrimination or prejudice.
Others are using many different approaches, like working with mostly minority high schools, using minority students as recruiters, and offering summer prep programs for promising students from struggling high schools. Ohio State University, for example, has started a magnet high school with a focus on math and science, to help prepare potential applicants, and sends educators into poor and low-performing middle and elementary schools to encourage children, and their parents, to start planning for college.
Officials across the country have a sense of urgency about the issue in part because Ward Connerly, the black California businessman behind such initiatives in California and Michigan, is planning a kind of Super Tuesday next fall, with ballot initiatives against racial preferences in several states. He is researching possible campaigns in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming, and expects to announce next month which states he has chosen.
By Diversity on Thursday, January 25, 2007 at 01:24 AM
By Diversity on Wednesday, January 3, 2007 at 09:41 PM
| 1 Comment | Tags: efforts to eliminate affirmative action inclusion diversity |
Who are these spirits that have conquered your soul? How did they entrap you? What were you told?
Deep inside my heart, a slave and freedman reside, their struggle still as vivid as the blood dripping down Jesus's side.
I have tried to understand the walk you are on, but my heart has stayed troubled and I feel the hurt of ancestors forgone.
Around the nation many of my people are still in misery and pain. Still seeking opportunity as your camp builds walls against affirmative action with distain.
I see hurt in their eyes as through the prismed windows they stare. You'd rather see them stay locked up. You have lost the will to care.
You are working hard to quiet the birds that sing. You are dampening their motivation -- get rid of the affirmative action thing.
Confidently you stride through states, hamlets, and a new town --laughing at the shackles still holding our people down.
Who are they -- These spirits that have taken control? Help me understand their power -- Is it notoriety or do you seek a personal bounty for selling a people's soul?
In California where you started your ride, you've helped lock up opportunity and the aspiration and hope of many has strategically died.
The medicine you prescribe is like a cancer misdiagnosed. Treating your actions like fodder as you continue to brag and boast.
Years ago while day dreaming back on a southern farm, I thought of the future and how my proud ancestors protected us from hurt and harm.
They instilled common decency, love and respect. They worked hard to break down walls of segregation and systemic neglect.
The vestiges still linger yet these spirits have blocked your view. They have hoodwinked a community and built a wall between me and you.
What is  really sad about the conviction you possess, is that you do not see the lost hope in that minority child's eye. You are too busy constructing a new Jim Crow test.
My fellow Americans, and yes, my friends in Michigan too, do not be fooled into thinking that his strategy is helping you too.
At night I dream of the courageous ones before. I see tears streaming from their eyes as they re-assert the question -- will you close opportunity's door?
Yes my friends, domestic tranquility may well be as stake, as economic inequality widens, pushing opportunity below the surface of a pristine Michigan lake.
Who are these spirits and what do they want? They are Reversity's ghosts looking for a new house to haunt.
Effenus Henderson
www.henderworks.com
December 14, 2006