Affirmative Action Forever?

John Fund on the on-going debate over Affirmative Action preferences in Michigan:

From the outraged cries of affirmative action diehards, you would think the dark night of fascism was descending with the passage of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative. Mary Sue Coleman is president of the University of Michigan, which has already spent millions of taxpayers' dollars defending its racial preferences in courts. She addressed what Tom Bray of the Detroit News called "a howling mob of hundreds of student and faculty protestors" last week. "Diversity matters at Michigan," she declared. "It matters today, and it will matter tomorrow." Echoes of George Wallace, who in 1963 declared from the steps of Alabama's Capitol: "I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

Ms. Coleman isn't the only Michigan official to employ Wallace-style rhetoric against MCRI. Detroit's Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick told a fundraiser last April that the measure would usher in an era of racial prejudice. "Bring it on!" he bellowed. "We will affirm to the world that affirmative action will be here today, it will be here tomorrow, and there will be affirmative action in the state forever."

So much for the position that such preferences would be temporary. The Supreme Court, thanks to an incoherent opinion by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, helped to muddy the water on this. Affirmative Action that uses quotas is discriminatory.

A shell game has been used by many of the quota advocates in this debate. First, they deny that Affirmative Action means hiring preferences, then they assert that any ban on hiring preferences will kill Affirmative Action. Fortunately, the voters aren't buying that.