Over at the National Review, the Phi Beta Cons are rejoicing over a federal judge's decision yesterday to uphold Proposal 2, the Ward Connerly-backed ballot initiative that passed in 2006 under the misleading name "The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative." Proposal 2, of course, effectively overturned the Supreme Court's 2003 decision in support of the limited use of race as a factor in the University of Michigan's admissions decisions. Now the admissions committee cannot consider race at all, a change that when affected in California (thanks to Connerly's Proposition 209) led to hundreds fewer students of color enrolling at UC-Berkeley and UCLA annually.
Connerly associate Jennifer Gratz, the original plaintiff opposing the University of Michigan's affirmative action policies, told media yesterday that foes of Proposition 2 were all akin to the radical student protest group By Any Means Necessary. But in actuality, mainstream progressive organizations such as the NAACP and the ACLU support affirmative acction, as does the U.S. military and national organizations representing working women. (White women are the leading beneficiaries of affirmative action policies.) Indeed, a national coalition of business, labor, military, and civil rights advocates are banding together to fight Connerly's attempts to ban affirmative action through ballot initiatives in five more states this November: Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. For more on that looming struggle -- and its potential effect on a presidential race that will surely include either a black man or a woman -- check on my report from last year.
--Dana Goldstein
