Thirty-Seven Words: An analysis of the petition process and the language of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative by Diane Carey

THIRTY-SEVEN WORDS
An analysis of the petition process and
the language of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative

by Diane Carey
RaceFreeZone.com and MCRI petition circulator



Despite losing court challenge after court challenge, opponents of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) continue to accuse MCRI’s workers and volunteers of “widespread and systematic racially-targeted fraud” to gather enough signatures to put the measure on the 2006 ballot. Though these charges have never been substantiated, they are accepted carte blanche by many officials who should be objective and deal with facts, but instead are driven by personal political motives. Even judges who have ruled time after time in favor of MCRI lower their brows and give lip service to “disturbing allegations,” yet have no evidence to cite. From the courtroom to the Michigan Civil Rights Commission to the Board of Canvassers, MCRI prevails despite undisguised, calcified biases against it by these persons who have sworn oaths to protect everyone’s rights. The media then lead with the part of the MCRI story that is least substantiated--the politically motivated mantra--but never demand proof. “Alleged” does not mean “true.”
Charges of vague language, code words, and undisclosed effects persist in a constant drumbeat from One United Michigan, By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), and other detractors. Their shrill attacks have garnered much media attention, but little cold scrutiny. In the law, though, certain words mean specific things. Law is different from common lingo.
Radical opponents are not only tarring the mission with unproven allegations, but they are tarring me---personally. I was among the most pro-active petition circulators for the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative. I contacted hundreds of registered voters by phone, sent out more than 1500 petitions, each with 15 spaces for signatures. Those people acted as circulators for their own families, friends, churches, offices, and neighbors, then either returned the completed petitions to me or sent them directly to the Lansing collection point. Assuming that these petitions were half-full on average, I can make an educated guess that I helped gather at least 3000 and possibly as many as 10,500 signatures. I resent and refute the accusations of “fraud.”

REPEAT A LIE OFTEN ENOUGH . . .

The modern movement to treat Americans without regard to race or gender began in California 1997 with Proposition 209, after University of California Trustee Ward Connerly discovered that the University was using racial and gender criteria for admissions and employment, despite its credo of “equal opportunity without regard to race or gender.” Initiative 200 passed in Washington State in 1998. Similar executive orders were enacted in Florida and Texas. In 2006 Proposal 2, the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, enjoyed a landslide victory after a venomous campaign by its opponents. More than 25% of the U. S. population now lives in preference-free states. But did the citizens of these states understand what they were voting upon?
Opponents claim that the language of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative is designed to “hoodwink”, that the title is itself deceptive, and that “widespread fraud and deceit” were used to collect the signatures. They claim specially trained paid signature gatherers infiltrated centers of dense black population like Detroit and Flint, telling black voters that MCRI would “protect civil rights” or “protect affirmative action,” and thus that black signers were duped into helping end racial preferences.
Where is the evidence? Hearsay is not evidence. A political tactic is not evidence. Persistent accusations are not evidence.
TO HIRE OR NOT TO HIRE
Were some signature gatherers paid? Yes. In the American political system, the sponsor of a ballot initiative assembles both volunteer and paid signature gatherers in order to succeed within the time limit. There’s nothing corrupt about this cottage industry that offers piecemeal employment to itinerant workers who want temp jobs. Some supporters donate time, while some donate money so others can be hired to do the work. The hired workers represent supporters who gave money. Money donations are free speech at work. All circulators act independently, can’t possibly be individually monitored, and may or may not represent the petition accurately. This is why every adult knows not to sign something he or she has not read or doesn’t understand. In any contract, the final responsibility lies with the person signing his or her name. People must read.
Since poll after poll showed Michigan voters in favor of ending race and gender preferences, why would any gatherer bother to lie about it?
BAMN’s website claims that paid gatherers “systematically” targeted black voters. They have never explained why anybody would deliberately target blacks. Are they saying blacks are collectively too stupid to read 37 little words before signing a legal document? Talk about racist insults!
Opponents have also complained that some of the signature gatherers in Detroit were themselves black. How is this a problem? Are they saying blacks lied to other blacks just for pay? Should the campaign have not hired blacks? The hiring was as race-neutral as the premise. What would BAMN and OUM say if there had been no black circulators?
However, I and my family and friends who circulated the petitions were all volunteers. The 1500+ petitions I mobilized were circulated without pay, as were thousands more in the state. Should voluntary efforts be rendered null by flimsy accusations? Since we were not paid, there was no motivation other than our own personal philosophies. This high-energy grassroots success has been ignored by the opponents, by the complicit bureaucrats and even by the hostile judges who have been unable to find a legal way to stop our organic groundswell.
Why would I work so hard for this? Am I a racist? Am I against women?
My grandparents were Assyrian immigrants. I’m a mother with a multi-race family. I have a white daughter, a white son, and a son adopted from Guatemala. I have a niece and three nephews who are half-black. My daughter is a financial analyst, my nieces involved in sports, and one is studying sports medicine at MSU. I don’t want my children divided by race, or told they have different rights from their own siblings and cousins. They are Americans, equal before the law. It’s that simple.
BAMN’s website says, “The actual effect of this proposal would be to exclude the majority of fully qualified black, Latina/o and Native American students from admission to the University of Michigan and other colleges and universities in our state.”
If these applicants are “fully qualified” and race is not a factor, why would they be excluded?
And why would I work so hard to exclude my own son, niece and nephews from higher education? Maybe something else is going on.

THE TRAINING SESSION

I attended the Lansing training session for signature gatherers. The session was a dry, non-political seminar on a legal process and how to avoid mistakes such as using birthdates instead of the date of signing. Use black ink. Do not sign the circulator’s name until after the petition is complete. Send it to this address. Have people read the language, or read it to them.
Never were we told to get signatures “by any means necessary.” In fact, we were encouraged to explain fully that the initiative affected only State government education, hiring or contracts.
In Mid-Michigan, I sent out multiple press releases, wrote op-eds explaining the initiative, was interviewed by newspapers and TV stations, spoke on several talk radio shows, addressed gatherings, was a panelist in debates all over the state, and engaged in every possible effort to publicize the facts of MCRI. I even started a blog called RaceFreeZone.com and loaded it with facts, analysis and research, including quotations by many black scholars and race relations experts. If this is fraud, I’m lousy at it.

37 LITTLE WORDS

BAMN’s website says, “The ‘Michigan Civil Rights Initiative’ is a fraud. The entire effort is an attempt to hoodwink the population of Michigan. The rightwing wishes to sugarcoat the poison by calling it a ‘civil rights initiative’ when its aim is to overturn the laws and the programs that the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s secured in Michigan.”
Let’s have a look at what the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative actually says, right out in the open:

THE MICHIGAN CIVIL RIGHTS INITIATIVE PETITION LANGUAGE
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.
THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964

All persons shall be entitled to be free, at any establishment or place, from discrimination or segregation of any kind on the grounds of race, color, religion, or national origin, if such discrimination or segregation is or purports to be required by any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, rule, or order of a State or any agency of political subdivision thereof.


These initiatives are named “Civil Rights” initiatives because they are modeled after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Civil rights do not belong to any group or race. We all have civil rights.
If MCRI secretly aims to overturn the Civil Rights movement, why does it so closely mirror the language of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Maybe something else is going on.

BY ANY OTHER NAME . . .

After losing their fight to deny the people of Michigan our right to vote on this initiative, opponents went after the actual wording. They claimed that “preferential treatment” is a code phrase to avoid saying “affirmative action.” If so, then the Civil Rights Act of 1964 engages the same “code.” There is no mention of affirmative action in the Act.
Ultimately the Bureau of Elections caved and changed the ballot wording to this:

A PROPOSAL TO AMEND THE STATE CONSTITUTION TO BAN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION PROGRAMS THAT GIVE PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT TO GROUPS OR INDIVIDUALS BASED ON THEIR RACE, GENDER, COLOR, ETHNICITY OR NATIONAL ORIGIN FOR PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT, EDUCATION OR CONTRACTING PURPOSES.
This language is not that of the actual state constitutional amendment. The amendment itself reads exactly as the petition language reads, so what was the point of changing it on the ballot? The addition of “affirmative action programs” was forced in on the assumption that voters would support and defend “affirmative action.” Would they?
The phrase “affirmative action” is legally undefined, therefore hard to interpret in law. It was coined by President John F. Kennedy on January 9, 1961: “The contractor will not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin. The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color or national origin.” (emphasis added)
“Without regard” means that race, creed, color or national origin must carry no influence for special treatment, for or against a person.
President Lyndon Johnson later revised Kennedy’s phrase into meaning the exact opposite of Kennedy’s intents. In 1965 Executive Order 11246 required federal contractors to “take affirmative action” to employ minorities and to document those efforts. President Richard Nixon later added “goals and timetables” to “increase minority employment.” With two strokes of the executive pen, Johnson and Nixon had invented racial quotas. This upside-down version became the common interpretation of affirmative action: unearned rewards based on race. Gender was added in 1967.
The result has been a decades-long scramble to define “minority,” a feeding frenzy of “front” businesses with token 51% minority of female “owners,” billions of dollars poured into remedial training sinkholes, separate college admissions pools, and uncounted minority students boosted into colleges beyond their academic skills, counted as “diversity in admissions,” only to flunk out and be forgotten, rather than attending colleges better matched to them and actually graduating. This applies to everybody—I would fail at Harvard, but I know better than to go there.
But what else does “affirmative action” mean? Is it based on race or on economic disadvantage? Or based on sex? Does it apply to poor whites? Does it apply to rich blacks? Does race trump gender? Can a millionaire woman get it just by being a woman? Is a poor white boy rejected while a wealthy boy claiming he’s 1/32nd Cherokee gets a boost? Will there be affirmative action DNA tests--in America? What if the white boy is in a wheelchair? Do recently immigrated Hispanics get more favors than Hispanics who were born here? Does it mean money? Does it mean tokenism? Quotas? A place at the head of the line? Does it mean 20 free points in a college admissions test? Does it mean “no whites need apply”? Do Asians get it, or are they too successful on their own? How does it choose between a Pacific-rim woman and a Puerto Rican man? Or is it only for those whose ancestors were oppressed on American soil? If so, why are foreign millionaires coming here and getting juicy contracts based on “minority” status? Do Eskimos get it even though they were never oppressed? Were blacks historically more “oppressed” than Chinese railroad workers, imported sex slaves or Irish paupers? Does a black from Morocco count just by being black? What exactly is “affirmative action”?
The truth is that no one knows. The term has never been legally defined. It is an amorphous colloquialism, meaning something different to each person. Forcing “affirmative action” into the ballot language may have actually helped get MCRI approved in the general election, because people used their own imaginations to define it.
The movements to ban race/gender-based preferences mean what they say: the state governments may not prefer or reject based upon physical features or nationality. Not all affirmative action is banned, as BAMN and OUM insist. There is zero effect on economic-based affirmative action; poor people of all colors can get help. There is zero effect on health programs; there’s nothing in the language about health care. There is no effect on privately managed race- or gender-based affirmative action programs, schools, scholarships, businesses or hiring. For legal purposes, “preference” is actually the more accurate term.

BY THE NUMBERS

The MCRI petition needed 313,757 signatures to qualify for appearance on the ballot. The petition campaign collected 508,282 signatures, submitted January 6, 2005, more than any other ballot initiative in Michigan’s history.

7/13/2005 - Public record: The Secretary of State Staff Report
concludes that 455,373 of the 505,970 facially-valid signatures
(or 90%) submitted by MCRI are from registered voters. The
Staff Report concludes through the random sampling technique
that there is greater than a 99.9% chance that MCRI has enough
signatures (317,757) to qualify, requiring that the initiative be
certified.

According to the law, certification was required. Frantic challengers wanted the law to do their dirty work, but didn’t mind ignoring the law when it suited them. They suddenly declared that “as many as” 125, 000 signatures may have been gathered from black people who were told that MCRI “protects affirmative action” or “protects civil rights.” Where did they get this number? In no court case or venue were they able to field more than a few dozen after-the-fact testimonials, numbering somewhere between 160 and 200—the number is never the same. Several are from people who never signed and could not prove they were approached. There is no basis for the wildly imaginary number of 125,000.
But let’s entertain the fanciful. Let’s throw out every possible black signature, including those who signed willingly because they want to be judged on the content of their character instead of the color of their skin. If we subtract 125,000 from the 505,970 signatures accepted as “valid,” there are still 380,970 signatures; 90% of that number is 342,873 – still well over the required 313,757. This is not imaginary.
That’s 342,873 people whose civil rights are being ignored by those who claim fraud which they cannot prove. Dare I say “disenfranchised”?

ONE WOMAN’S POLL

Frustrated by persistent accusations of fraud or misunderstanding, I pulled out my partial list of circulators and signatories, and phoned all over the state at random—Fenton, Flint, Traverse City, Zeeland, Pontiac, Eastpointe, and more. “Remember that petition to stop the state from choosing between us by race and gender?” I asked. “Did you comprehend the meaning and goals?”
I called 111 signers and 17 circulators. Every single one had comprehended the petition language and signed willingly. Because I deal with hard evidence, I asked for original-signature statements attesting to their understanding of the initiative.
Not one person turned me down. I can easily get more. I now have “testimonials” of a comparable number to those collected by opponents, which they call “evidence of fraud.” I have evidence that there was not fraud. I invite all media to investigate.

“I read it. I understood it. Now let me vote on it.”
Patty Alspach
Michigan voter

Those half-million-plus signatures did not change the law. If the people of Michigan had believed the language unclear or that fraud existed, there was a second chance to reject MCRI: the election of November 2006. The amendment passed by a resounding 58-42% margin, with “Yes” votes from a secure 2,141,010 voters during a very left-leaning election. The result debunked assumptions that MCRI is strictly a conservative, libertarian, right wing or Republican plot. Even people who always or occasionally vote Democrat declared, “Yes, we understand. Race and gender affirmative action is wrong. Americans should be equal before the law.” The victory cut across racial lines, party lines, age lines and gender lines. These results also destroyed the wistful dream that the California and Washington State elections were somehow just mistakes.

JUST THE FACTS, MA’AM
The claim that MCRI is awash in fraud is itself an orchestrated artifice. Opponents lie from the hip about the initiative’s intent and impact, saying that MCRI is against equal opportunity—in fact, it guarantees equal opportunity. Affirmative action is the opposite of equal opportunity. They insist that MCRI prohibits gender-specific health programs like cervical cancer, breast cancer or prostate cancer screenings. Nonsense. No such program has been stopped in California or Washington State, as proven by both states’ official websites. Public gender-based health and education programs are alive and well. Check the Sally Ride program at Berkeley. It’s still there.
Jobs that depend on gender, like female undercover police officers, are not affected, as the opposition claims. Women’s and girls’ sports programs are not affected, as the opposition claims. Pay equity for women, fair housing and lending programs for women and minorities are not affected, as the opposition claims.
Opponents invented wilder claims as they became more desperate, including one completely off-the-wall scare tactic that MCRI would affect the adoption of special-needs children (on the Norm Jones Show, Talk 580). Go back and read the actual language. I am an adoptive mother. Why would I support anything that would hinder adoption?
Maybe there’s something else going on . . .
Maybe the “widespread and systematic fraud” is on the other foot.

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Affirmative Action Backfires by Gail Heriot from the August 24, 2007 Wall Street Journal, Op-Ed Page

Affirmative Action Backfires

Three years ago, UCLA law professor Richard Sander published an explosive, fact-based study of the consequences of affirmative action in American law schools in the Stanford Law Review. Most of his findings were grim, and they caused dismay among many of the champions of affirmative action -- and indeed, among those who were not.

Easily the most startling conclusion of his research: Mr. Sander calculated that there are fewer black attorneys today than there would have been if law schools had practiced color-blind admissions -- about 7.9% fewer by his reckoning. He identified the culprit as the practice of admitting minority students to schools for which they are inadequately prepared. In essence, they have been "matched" to the wrong school.
No one claims the findings in Mr. Sander's study, "A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools," are the last word on the subject. Although so far his work has held up to scrutiny at least as well as that of his critics, all fair-minded scholars agree that more research is necessary before the "mismatch thesis" can be definitively accepted or rejected.
Unfortunately, fair-minded scholars are hard to come by when the issue is affirmative action. Some of the same people who argue Mr. Sander's data are inconclusive are now actively trying to prevent him from conducting follow-up research that might yield definitive answers. If racial preferences really are causing more harm than good, they apparently don't want you -- or anyone else -- to know.


Take William Kidder, a University of California staff advisor and co-author of a frequently cited attack of Sander's study. When Mr. Sander and his co-investigators sought bar passage data from the State Bar of California that would allow analysis by race, Mr. Kidder passionately argued that access should be denied, because disclosure "risks stigmatizing African American attorneys." At the same time, the Society of American Law Teachers, which leans so heavily to the left it risks falling over sideways, gleefully warned that the state bar would be sued if it cooperated with Mr. Sander.
Sadly, the State Bar's Committee of Bar Examiners caved under the pressure. The committee members didn't formally explain their decision to deny Mr. Sander's request for this data (in which no names would be disclosed), but the root cause is clear: Over the last 40 years, many distinguished citizens -- university presidents, judges, philanthropists and other leaders -- have built their reputations on their support for race-based admissions. Ordinary citizens have found secure jobs as part of the resulting diversity bureaucracy.
If the policy is not working, they, too, don't want anyone to know.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hopes that it can persuade the State Bar to reconsider. Its soon-to-be released report on affirmative action in law schools specifically calls for state bar authorities to cooperate with qualified scholars studying the mismatch issue. The recommendation is modest. The commission doesn't claim that Mr. Sander is right or his critics wrong. It simply seeks to encourage and facilitate important research.
The Commission's deeper purpose is to remind those who support and administer affirmative action polices that good intentions are not enough. Consequences also matter. And conscious, deliberately chosen ignorance is not a good-faith option.
Mr. Sander's original article noted that when elite law schools lower their academic standards in order to admit a more racially diverse class, schools one or two tiers down feel they must do the same. As a result, there is now a serious gap in academic credentials between minority and non-minority law students across the pecking order, with the average black student's academic index more than two standard deviations below that of his average white classmate.
Not surprisingly, such a gap leads to problems. Students who attend schools where their academic credentials are substantially below those of their fellow students tend to perform poorly.
The reason is simple: While some students will outperform their entering academic credentials, just as some students will underperform theirs, most students will perform in the range that their academic credentials predict. As a result, in elite law schools, 51.6% of black students had first-year grade point averages in the bottom 10% of their class as opposed to only 5.6% of white students. Nearly identical performance gaps existed at law schools at all levels. This much is uncontroversial.
Supporters of race-based admissions argue that, despite the likelihood of poor grades, minority students are still better off accepting the benefit of a preference and graduating from a more prestigious school. But Mr. Sander's research suggests that just the opposite may be true -- that law students, no matter what their race, may learn less, not more, when they enroll in schools for which they are not academically prepared. Students who could have performed well at less competitive schools may end up lost and demoralized. As a result, they may fail the bar.
Specifically, Mr. Sander found that when black and white students with similar academic credentials compete against each other at the same school, they earn about the same grades. Similarly, when black and white students with similar grades from the same tier law school take the bar examination, they pass at about the same rate.
Yet, paradoxically, black students as a whole have dramatically lower bar passage rates than white students with similar credentials. Something is wrong.
The Sander study argued that the most plausible explanation is that, as a result of affirmative action, black and white students with similar credentials are not attending the same schools. The white students are more likely to be attending a school that takes things a little more slowly and spends more time on matters that are covered on the bar exam. They are learning, while their minority peers are struggling at more elite schools.
Mr. Sander calculated that if law schools were to use color-blind admissions policies, fewer black law students would be admitted to law schools (3,182 students instead of 3,706), but since those who were admitted would be attending schools where they have a substantial likelihood of doing well, fewer would fail or drop out (403 vs. 670). In the end, more would pass the bar on their first try (1,859 vs. 1,567) and more would eventually pass the bar (2,150 vs. 1,981) than under the current system of race preferences. Obviously, these figures are just approximations, but they are troubling nonetheless.
Mr. Sander has his critics -- some thoughtful, some just strident -- but so far none has offered a plausible alternative explanation for the data. Of course, Mr. Sander doesn't need to be proven 100% correct for his research to be devastating news for affirmative-action supporters.
Suppose the consequences of race-based admissions turn out to be a wash -- neither increasing nor decreasing the number of minority attorneys. In that case, few people would think it worth the costs, not least among them the human costs that result from the failure of the supposed beneficiaries to graduate and pass the bar.
Under current practices, only 45% of blacks who enter law school pass the bar on their first attempt as opposed to over 78% of whites. Even after multiple tries, only 57% of blacks succeed. The rest are often saddled with student debt, routinely running as high as $160,000, not counting undergraduate debt. How great an increase in the number of black attorneys is needed to justify these costs?
The most important other recommendation of the Civil Rights Commission is a call for transparency. As a matter of consumer fairness, law school applicants -- regardless of race -- need to know the statistical likelihood that someone with their academic credentials will successfully graduate and pass the bar. Once informed, they can better decide whether to undertake the risk of attending that particular school, or any law school at all. If law schools are unwilling to undertake this simple reform, it should be mandated by law.
Under current practices, law school applicants are at the mercy of admissions officers for that information; it is almost never provided except on a class-wide basis where success rates are positively misleading. Minority students whose academic credentials are substantially below their average classmates are lulled into believing that they are just as likely to graduate and pass the bar. When they don't, they may be stuck with the bills, not to mention the loss of several years of their lives.
The problem is that the admissions officer's job is to enroll students, not to draw the risks of failure to their attention. Indeed, in some cases, the officer may be frantic to enroll minority students in order to comply with the stringent new diversity standards of the American Bar Association Council on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. As the federal government's accrediting agency for law schools, the ABA Council determines whether a law school will be eligible for the federal student-loan program. The law school that fails to satisfy its diversity requirements does so at its peril -- as a number of law school deans can amply attest.
Decades of law students have relied upon the good faith of law school officials to tell them what they needed to know. For the 43% of black law students who never became lawyers, maybe that reliance was misplaced.
Ms. Heriot is professor of law at the University of San Diego and a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

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Diane Carey Opines on the "Radical Idea" that Diversity is not a goal.

DIVERSITY IS NOT A GOAL

My son attends a nearly all-white school. There’s not much diversity, tragically. The school, believe it or not, just educates any kid who enters its doors. Radical idea! After all, how can the kids learn if there aren’t different colors of faces around them?

I asked my son if it’s hurting him to be in a predominantly white school. He was mystified, since he just made the B honor roll and is proud of his achievement. His 6th grade project was, his teachers said, the best in 10 years. I don’t know how he did it. It’s unimaginable for him to have succeeded.

You see, my son is Guatemalan. We adopted him at the age of three months. His skin is brown. His hair is very black. According to the “diversity” crowd, he’s being damaged by attending a non-diverse public school in our mid-Michigan district. The diversity pushers think his white pals should be put on busses and shipped to, say, Flint, because there aren’t enough white faces in the Flint schools. The black children of Flint should be shipped 30 miles back to our district so they can show their black faces, so the school can claim it’s “diverse.”




Fortunately, the Supreme Court just struck down the Mengele-esque concept that public schools should be able to hold a color wheel up to a child’s face and decide on the value of his hue, so diversity can be “created.”
Justice Stephen Breyer says that not having diversity as a primary goal undermines the promise of integrated schools the landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education from 53 years past.

"To invalidate the plans under review is to threaten the promise of Brown," Breyer said.

The “promise of Brown”? When did the promise of the Brown morph from educated children without regard to race into forcing diversity by looking only children’s faces? The “promise” was that public schools in America would be open to all children of any color who resided within a school’s district. The promise does not involve shuffling kids like marbles to achieve color balances. Any child, of any color, in any order, in any balance, should be educated equally with the others.
"What was wrong in 1954 cannot be right today," says Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court’s only black member. "The plans before us base school assignment decisions on students' race. Because 'our Constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens,' such race-based decisionmaking is unconstitutional."

My son agrees. “Diversity” should not be a goal of schools. Education should be the goal of schools. Radical idea, huh?

Diane Carey
Racefreezone.com
Owosso, Michigan

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Juan Williams Says it All in Today's New York Times. Read it!

Don’t Mourn Brown v. Board of Education

By JUAN WILLIAMS
Published: June 29, 2007
Washington

LET us now praise the Brown decision. Let us now bury the Brown decision.

With yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling ending the use of voluntary schemes to create racial balance among students, it is time to acknowledge that Brown’s time has passed. It is worthy of a send-off with fanfare for setting off the civil rights movement and inspiring social progress for women, gays and the poor. But the decision in Brown v. Board of Education that focused on outlawing segregated schools as unconstitutional is now out of step with American political and social realities.

Desegregation does not speak to dropout rates that hover near 50 percent for black and Hispanic high school students. It does not equip society to address the so-called achievement gap between black and white students that mocks Brown’s promise of equal educational opportunity.





And the fact is, during the last 20 years, with Brown in full force, America’s public schools have been growing more segregated — even as the nation has become more racially diverse. In 2001, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that the average white student attends a school that is 80 percent white, while 70 percent of black students attend schools where nearly two-thirds of students are black and Hispanic.

By the early ’90s, support in the federal courts for the central work of Brown — racial integration of public schools — began to rapidly expire. In a series of cases in Atlanta, Oklahoma City and Kansas City, Mo., frustrated parents, black and white, appealed to federal judges to stop shifting children from school to school like pieces on a game board. The parents wanted better neighborhood schools and a better education for their children, no matter the racial make-up of the school. In their rulings ending court mandates for school integration, the judges, too, spoke of the futility of using schoolchildren to address social ills caused by adults holding fast to patterns of residential segregation by both class and race.

The focus of efforts to improve elementary and secondary schools shifted to magnet schools, to allowing parents the choice to move their children out of failing schools and, most recently, to vouchers and charter schools. The federal No Child Left Behind plan has many critics, but there’s no denying that it is an effective tool for forcing teachers’ unions and school administrators to take responsibility for educating poor and minority students.

It was an idealistic Supreme Court that in 1954 approved of Brown as a race-conscious policy needed to repair the damage of school segregation and protect every child’s 14th-Amendment right to equal treatment under law. In 1971, Chief Justice Warren Burger, writing for a unanimous court still embracing Brown, said local school officials could make racial integration a priority even if it did not improve educational outcomes because it helped “to prepare students to live in a pluralistic society.”

But today a high court with a conservative majority concludes that any policy based on race — no matter how well intentioned — is a violation of every child’s 14th-Amendment right to be treated as an individual without regard to race. We’ve come full circle.

In 1990, after months of interviews with Justice Thurgood Marshall, who had been the lead lawyer for the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund on the Brown case, I sat in his Supreme Court chambers with a final question. Almost 40 years later, was he satisfied with the outcome of the decision? Outside the courthouse, the failing Washington school system was hypersegregated, with more than 90 percent of its students black and Latino. Schools in the surrounding suburbs, meanwhile, were mostly white and producing some of the top students in the nation.

Had Mr. Marshall, the lawyer, made a mistake by insisting on racial integration instead of improvement in the quality of schools for black children?

His response was that seating black children next to white children in school had never been the point. It had been necessary only because all-white school boards were generously financing schools for white children while leaving black students in overcrowded, decrepit buildings with hand-me-down books and underpaid teachers. He had wanted black children to have the right to attend white schools as a point of leverage over the biased spending patterns of the segregationists who ran schools — both in the 17 states where racially separate schools were required by law and in other states where they were a matter of culture.

If black children had the right to be in schools with white children, Justice Marshall reasoned, then school board officials would have no choice but to equalize spending to protect the interests of their white children.

Racial malice is no longer the primary motive in shaping inferior schools for minority children. Many failing big city schools today are operated by black superintendents and mostly black school boards.

And today the argument that school reform should provide equal opportunity for children, or prepare them to live in a pluralistic society, is spent. The winning argument is that better schools are needed for all children — black, white, brown and every other hue — in order to foster a competitive workforce in a global economy.

Dealing with racism and the bitter fruit of slavery and “separate but equal” legal segregation was at the heart of the court’s brave decision 53 years ago. With Brown officially relegated to the past, the challenge for brave leaders now is to deliver on the promise of a good education for every child.

Juan Williams, a senior correspondent for NPR and a political analyst for Fox News Channel, is the author of “Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America.”

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Ward Connerly Comments for RaceFreeZone.Com on Yesterday's Supreme Court Decisions

RaceFreeZone.com received the following message from Ward Connerly this morning, June 29, 2007:


"The decision(s) of the Supreme Court declaring that the use of "race" in k-12 student placement is unconstitutional is of crucial value in the movement to purge race out of the public arena. Coming on the heels of the overwhelming rejection of race preferences in Michigan by the people of that state, the Supreme Court has nudged America one step further toward its destiny of being 'colorblind.' "

I don't think it's possible to overestimate the influence of Ward Connerly and his supporters in setting America on a course into a truly "colorblind" twenty-first century.




Type the later part of the post, that you want to hide, here

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