Diane Carey Responds to Jack Lessenberry

In today's Metro Times Op Ed writer Jack Lessenberry wrote:

I am totally in favor of affirmative action, always have been, and I am a middle-aged, white, Anglo-Saxon male, of class origins lower than those of that intellectual pinup girl for today's trailer park, Jennifer "Adenoidal Whine' Gratz.

I fought against Proposal 2, knowing all along that it would pass, that every laid-off metal bender in Center Line was just itching to stick it to the blacks, who, some of them really do think, get an automatic free ride, full scholarship to the University of Michigan, just for being Negroes.

And indeed, the voters of this state overwhelmingly and disgracefully chose to outlaw affirmative action in college admissions and government hiring. Affirmative action lost by a landslide everywhere except in Detroit, and the two counties surrounding Michigan State University and the University of Michigan.

But it isn't over till it's over, and, last week, the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP filed suit in federal court asking, essentially, that the courts overturn the will of the voters. "We have come too far to allow the doors of opportunity to be shut in the face of the American promise of liberty and justice," intoned the Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit NAACP.

He claimed that "affirmative action is still the law of the land." He was joined by Kary Moss, who is executive director of the ACLU of Michigan.

She referred in a press release to the twin U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the U-M cases. She said those 2003 rulings "made it clear that it is entirely within the law for universities to consider race and gender as one of many criteria in selecting their student body."

Now, full disclosure on my part. I firmly believe in the American Civil Liberties Union. I give them money. I am on Kary Moss' advisory board. I think she is one of the best things Michigan has going for it.... (Lessenberry continues from this point to agree that the basis of the lawsuits brought to prevent the implementation of the MCRI are nonsense, but this is a legal argument for him. His true beliefs are stated above.)


To the above paragraphs Diane Carey responds:

To the Metro Times,

Please re-think your use of James Lessenberry's "opining." It's not "opining;" it's "Oh-whining." Lessenberry's membership in the socialist/affirmative action strike team diminishes his credibility. He calls names but misses points, displaying a journalistic liar of the first degree.

His tirade against Proposal 2 is faulty, and his reducing the voters of Michigan to "laid-off metal benders in Center Line" is a gross misinterpretation of what happened. I am the mother of a multi-race family and aunt of four mixed race (part black) children. I helped lead the charge against race preferences because my children are Americans and shouldn't have different rights from each other based on skin color.

Lessenberry merrily ignores the fact that 52% of women, 50% of labor households, 50% of non-labor households, and even 14% of blacks no longer want to be judged by race or gender. If the vote had happened in a conservative- slanting year, Lessenberry would have said that "rich white revenge" was at work, but since clearly that's not what happened, we're now all "metal benders" trying to "stick it to blacks." Can he explain why I would want to "stick it" to my own children?

Affirmative action is not the law of the land, despite the Lessenberry tantrum. Equal opportunity is the law of the land. Affirmative action (sorting people by race) is the opposite of equal opportunity (everyone the same before the law). Affirmative action is a corrupt political disease. As the next step in the Civil Rights march in America, we must dismantle it.

Diane Carey
RaceFreeZone.com
Owosso, Michigan

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An Op Ed piece by Diane Carey that has been published in several Michigan nespapers:

But wait a minute . . . before the election, Jennifer Granholm, Liz Boyd, Kwame Kilpatrick, the UM, WSU, MSU, Michigan’s cities and state agencies cried panic at the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative. It was going to plunge us into Medieval times, cause an apocalypse and end the world. I traveled the state doing interviews and debates, and the howls of agony thundered everywhere. Minorities and women would shrivel away to their doom.

Now these people are saying the new law won’t change the rules, and they’re ignoring the will of the voters of Michigan? Suddenly, they only have to pay attention to Federal mandates about affirmative action?

Fine. Let Michigan’s state institutions and cities who want to keep race and sex preferences do so—as long as they don’t take one more dollar of state tax-payers’ money. Defy our will, be denied our funding.

Let’s see how they like being ignored.

Diane Carey
RaceFreeZone.com
Owosso, Michigan

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Diane Carey replies to Dawson Bell's Free Press Story below

Mr. Bell,

I was a front-line player in the MCRI debate, forming my own advocacy group, Race Free Zone and a hot-button blog, RaceFreeZone.com. Though "only" 24 states have ballot initiative processes, in fact this is a quintessential American tide. With a win in Michigan, although "only" in four states (California, Washington and Florida by exec order) now 25% of the population of the U.S. lives free of race/sex preferences. We do very well in high-density states, and I predict that the majority in the US will soon live in race free zones. Eventually the politicians in Washington will find out that this is a winning issue. Since politicians are weasels and always want to "lead" us to where we're already going, the ban on race/sex affirmative action has a national future.

Diane Carey
RaceFreeZone.com

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The fight for equal rights and civil rights for all Americans continues

Some thoughts based on my life experience. In 1959 I read a sociological study that had been printed in Scientific American in 1947 that detailed the discovery of the sea change in the attitudes of Americans who had fought in World War II with regard to racial equality and justice for all. We could all see even as early as 1959 that the greatest battles for civil rights beyond the battlefield were sometimes individual events like Harry Truman, who only finished high school and that in Missouri, integrating the armed services by executive order. Others were more profound like Earl Warren, the former conservative governor of California, demanding a 9-0 vote in Brown vs. The Board to overturn Plessy.

The negative commentors in today's Free Press, besides being poorly educated, don't take into account the history of the civil rights movement. Social movements reflect their times and are triggered into action by great events. The success of the simmering civil rights movement in America was born from our unambiguous victory in World War II. The Germans and the Japanese both based their imperialism on racial superiority. The discrediting of this idea in military defeat didn't go unnoticed by the huge number of citizen soldiers in America who rose up to crush both of these power crazed nations.

Now, the civil rights movement is mainstream, but every and any detail created to enable civil rights for all is not a sacred commitment to be forever enshrined in law. The children and grandchildren of those men and women who gave their lives to extend equality to all have determined that it is time to step back, look at everything that has been done, and redefine what is to be kept and what is to be discarded from the "tools" that were devised to make sure that equality was firmly entrenched in our social as well as our legal system.

We all winked at the inequity of affirmative action for some to ensure equality for all. Justice O'Connor said in Gratz v. Bollinger that she hoped in 25 years affirmative action wouldn't be necessary for the goal of equality to be reached. The process to guarantee that her statement become true is under way, and in truth it may take another generation, but the crutch, and that's all it is and ever was, of affirmative action is going away.

The equality that is every American's birthright will be ensured only for those who stand up without assistance and take it firmly in hand. You are free in America to make mistakes, dodge opportunity, and complain that the world, or people of a particular skin color owe you a living. You are not free, unless you actually are disabled, to demand that the rest of us simply do your part for you.

Every human being is born unable to take care of itself. That's what mother, family, friends, and community are for. But at some point you need to take care of yourself to prepare to give back to those who took care of you and to prepare to take care of the next generation.

The childhood of the American civil rights movement is over.

We must "put away the things of its childhood."

Farewell affirmative action for all but those Americans disabled by birth, accident, or war.

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From this morning's Free Press:

Published: December 13. 2006 3:00AM
Michigan
Prop 2 backers to take campaign to other states
December 13, 2006

BY DAWSON BELL

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER


Buoyed by a landmark victory in Michigan in November, backers of the anti-affirmative action Michigan Civil Rights Initiative -- also known as Proposal 2 -- are set to announce plans today for similar ballot proposals in other states in 2008.

Seven states, all west of the Mississippi River, are candidates for ballot efforts, said Jennifer Gratz, the Southgate native who directed the MCRI campaign and will participate in today's announcement.

In an interview Tuesday, she declined to say how many states ultimately would be targeted in 2008, but said: "We're definitely looking at multiple states."

Affirmative action proponents, who said they expected as much, continue to look for ways to blunt the appeal of the MCRI approach -- banning the use of race and gender preferences in government hiring, contracting and university admissions.

Ward Connerly, the California businessman and former University of California regent who led successful efforts to ban preferences in California and Washington state before bringing the fight to Michigan three years ago, is leading the latest initiative to take the battle to more states.

Gratz, whose lawsuit over race-based admissions policies at the University of Michigan helped propel the state into the middle of the affirmative action debate, said she will join Connerly's California-based American Civil Rights Institute and expects to work on the issue full-time.

Gratz confirmed the states where petition drives and ballot proposals are most likely. Those states are: Oregon, South Dakota, Nevada, Nebraska, Missouri, Arizona and Colorado.

She declined to say in how many states she expects to launch full campaigns, but predicted it will be more than one.

"We've always felt that if we could win in Michigan, we could win anywhere," she said.

Gratz said MCRI had been contacted both during and since the Nov. 7 election -- in which Proposal 2 was approved 58%-42% -- by activists interested in mounting similar campaigns in various states. Some of the contacts came from the offices of elected officials, but many were from "ordinary people who just want to do something about equal rights," she said.

Although many predicted the Michigan election result could create momentum for the campaign to end race- and gender-based preferences in affirmative action programs nationally, the movement faces both political and practical limits.

States that can be targeted for ballot proposals -- the only method Connerly has been able to use to circumvent entrenched opposition -- are mostly in the West, and a minority. Only 24 states allow citizen-initiated referenda, and that includes California, Washington and Michigan.

But the success of Proposal 2 may rally some new, or previously flagging, support.

Advocates for affirmative action admit they've not found the formula for beating Connerly at the ballot box.

In Michigan, virtually every influential interest group, politician and public figure opposed Proposal 2, but that seemed to have little effect on voters.

Wade Henderson, president of the Washington, D.C.- based Leadership Council on Civil Rights, said a 2008 campaign on multiple fronts would pose "a real challenge."

"We obviously have to go back and rethink a bit" after what happened in Michigan, he said.

But Henderson said he believes a sustained, well-financed campaign that emphasizes the benefits of equal opportunity could be successful.

"I think ultimately the American people are fundamentally fair, and they recognize that opportunity has not been universally available," he said.

Contact DAWSON BELL at 313-222-6604 or dbell@freepress.com.

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Steve,

Telling people to sign a petition to pass a law treating everyone equal is not misleading. People who sign things without reading them are dumb, and there are a lot of dumb people in this country.

At an environmentalism rally I saw a comedian get hundreds of signatures to outlaw "Di-Hydrogen Monoxide." Mindless environmentalists signed with great alacrity, only to later find out they were banning water. If someone is dumb enough to sign something they disagree with, there should be no recourse.

Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 8:12 am

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ricardo, I can not begin to count the number of Michigan laws broken my the MCRI people. Much more upsetting, however, is the shady way that MCRI used cronies like Mike Cox to circumvent the proper process for placing a measure on the ballot.

Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 8:06 am

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Whatever the outcome in whatever other state, I only hope that
both sides will accept the will of the people following the vote
and that residents of those states are not subjected to the constant
whining that those of us here in Michigan are enduring.

Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 8:05 am

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"Where are the courts when we need them"? Why do you assume that the courts are set up to invalidate laws you don't like?

You might be in favor of affirmative action, but abandoning it is not racist. Assuming that minorities are too dumb and inept to make it in this society without a government hand-out, is racist.

Let me ask you this: If AA is so necessary, why stop at admission to college, why not extend it to the college classroom? Since minorities are on such an unlevel playing field, why not give minorities a 5.0 for an A, 4.0 for a B, 3.0 for a C, etc. and force whites to go by the standard GPA schedule? If minorities are unable to compete for jobs, and in an "unfair" financial position, why not have 2 prices for goods at grocery stores and retail stores--say a 20% discount to minorities on account of the "unlevel playing field." Maybe instead of employee pricing on Big 3 cars, we could have minority pricing, because minorities need cars, but with big bad society so dead set against them, they just aren't able to earn as much as white folks, so in an effort to level the playing field, minorities get cheaper cars.

Why are all of you who are in favor of disparate treatment based on race uncomfortable extending that from the contracting/admission arena into areas like retail prices, and in class grades? Are any of these ideas any more ridiculous than lowering the standards when it comes to getting a job? It is exactly the same, and if you don't see the irony you are kidding yourself or just plain dumb.

I know of no greater insult than to tell the hard working and intelligent minorities I go to school with that their skin color precludes them from ever having the abilities I do, so they need the government to bump them up to my level.

Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 8:05 am

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i request that anyone who wants to reply: "you're the racist!" or "you're the moron!" to please give details in your responses. the crypto-fascist clowns who love to post here usually just resort to "i know you are, but what am i?" 4th grade style personal attacks when they're presented with evidence that doesn't fit into their convoluted worldview.

Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 7:54 am

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The rule of law, which is the foundation of a truly free society, seems to have gone out of fashion at Michigan's taxpayer supported universities.

A letter to the editor of the Detroit News from reader Eric W. Russell asks some questions about some Post Proposition 2 Pronouncements from Wayne State University on how to ensure that Michigan's amended constitution can be circumvented:


Dear Editor, The Detroit News:

Some folks at WSU Law School seem to have little respect for democratically enacted laws, such as the new constitutional amendment created by passage of Proposal 2. It is the apex of arrogance and contempt for the law for these people to publicly declare that they are formulating policy to skirt around what the electorate decided. Their idea to increase enrollment primarily from the City of Detroit is a slap in the face, since WSU is supported by tax money from everyone in the state, not just Detroit residents. In short, their proposed policy smacks of disrespect and dishonesty.

Sincerely,
Eric W. Russell

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Diane Carey has some thoughts on knee-jerk charges of racism brought up in political campaigns to discourage discussion and debate

Peter Brown (see below) hits it on the head: will Republicans have the spine to stand up to being called "racist" if they oppose race-based initiatives in 2008? They should--we need Republicans with spines. Democrat candidates also should look at these numbers and see which way the wind is blowing--huge numbers of Democrat voters cast ballots in favor of Proposal 2, the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative. This issue crosses political lines, and politicians would do well to notice that.

Will Michigan Vote Mean More Race Ballot Questions?
By Peter Brown

Lost amid the headlines of the Democratic takeover of Congress was the decision by Michigan voters to ban affirmative action/racial preferences. The vote raises the question of whether Republicans will see the issue as one they should champion anew elsewhere.

On Election Day, when Michigan easily re-elected a Democratic U.S. senator and governor, a ballot measure to end such programs in college admission and state government hiring and contracting won by an even larger margin.

But virtually every major GOP official and organization, including the gubernatorial candidate, opposed the measure, as did Democratic leaders and candidates.

Yet the proposal won overwhelming support from Republicans and independents, and almost all demographic groups.

There is no doubt that ballot questions about such programs, which backers call affirmative action and opponents call racial preferences, engender strong feelings.

Many African-Americans argue that it is racist to end programs developed over the past 35 years which give racial minorities, and in some cases white women, an edge in competitive situations.

Those who want to end affirmative action/preferences retort that the program themselves are racist since they discriminate based on race. These folks say they want to create a color-blind society.

In the 1980s and 1990s Republicans used racially-tinged issues to their benefit. But few GOP candidates have recently campaigned on affirmative action/preferences, even though they are aware of its potency at the polls.

In Michigan, even more than in California and Washington, which passed similar measures in the 1990s, feelings ran high. The major group opposing the measure calls itself "By Any Means Necessary" and used the courts, politicians and mass rallies to make its case.

BAMN is now threatening a lawsuit to block the law's implementation even though the federal courts refused a similar effort by activists in California after that state passed its measure. And the president of the University of Michigan has suggested her school will do what it can to circumvent the thrust of the new law.

Even though the opponents reportedly outspent the supporters by a five-to-one margin and had most of the major media in their camp editorially, the measure passed by a 58-42 percent margin.

Significantly, pre-election polls had shown the race roughly even. That means voters either changed their minds at the last minute, or more likely, knew how they would vote all along, but gave what might be considered the politically correct answer when asked by strangers over the telephone.

The ballot measure won majorities among virtually all demographic groups except blacks, self-described liberals and Democrats. It passed 64-36 percent among whites who were 85 percent of the electorate, and lost 86-14 among blacks, who were 12 percent (roughly the national average) of the electorate.

Other than a 50-50 split among the 15 percent of the electorate with incomes of $15,000-$30,000, the measure carried every income group and every age group. Interestingly, the only group of voters, when classified by education, among whom it lost was the 16 percent of the Michigan electorate with post-graduate degrees. And it received 49 percent from them.

Faced with these numbers, Republicans nationally may be reconsidering whether and how strongly to raise the issue in other states. After all, Michigan is among the more liberal states in the country, as are California and Washington. Given the vote there, one wonders how similar measures would play, for instance, in swing states during a presidential year like 2008.

Both parties have been putting measures that help them politically on state ballots. In 2006, for instance, Democratic-allied groups pushed measures to raise the minimum wage. And conservative/Republican groups have been putting ballot question on banning gay marriage on state ballots.

Democrats/liberals will argue, of course, that raising an issue that involves race is morally reprehensible. The Michigan vote, however, is additional evidence that most Americans don't see affirmative action/preferences as fair, and instead favor a color-blind society.

The political question is whether the Republicans have the stomach for reaching out to this broad constituency at the price of being called various unflattering names by the opposition.

Peter A. Brown is assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. He can be reached at peter.brown@quinnipiac.edu

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