Michelle Malkin has been following the progress of The Colorado Rights Initiative, and today she brings us good news. The Colorado Civil Rights Initiative has qualified for the ballot in November ‘08. For those not yet familiar with this initiative, it is a proposed amendment to the State Constitution which has a goal of ending racial and gender preferences. The text of the amendment would read:

The state shall not discriminate against or grant preferential treatment to any group or individual on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public contracting, or public education.

The national campaign organized by Ward Connerly founder of the American Civil Rights Institute, operates under the premise that all men (and women) are indeed created equal. His campaign started after being appointed as a Regent at the University of California, where he discovered that the University had different admissions standards based on race. After convincing the University to end raced based preferences, he fought to end the practice State wide via Prop 209. On November 5, 1996 the voters of California agreed with Connerly, by a margin of 55%-45%, that government should be colorblind.

The idea of States being colorblind in their hiring practices seems like an obvious one on the surface, however Ward Connerly’s initiative is not without its detractors. Most notably the ACLU has recently spoken out against the civil rights initiative.

California millionaire Ward Connerly and his so-called “American Civil Rights Institute” are trying to pull a fast one on the voting public, but local ACLU’s and their allies are working to preserve the integrity of the democratic process.

In five states across the country, Connerly is advancing the interests of the big construction companies for whom he lobbies by introducing ballot initiatives that would end affirmative action in public education, contracting and employment, including programs that level the playing field for women- and minority-owned businesses. His tactics are to misappropriate the terminology of the real civil rights movement by telling voters they can end race- and gender-based “discrimination” and to conceal the fact that his initiatives would end the affirmative action programs that truly promote equal opportunity. Connerly and his allies have not merely failed to inform voters of the purpose and effects of their initiatives, but have gone so far as to describe their petitions as supporting the very programs they seek to abolish.

If the ACLU’s argument against this ballot initiative rested solely on the premise that petitioners were misleading in their request for signatures I would strongly agree with them. The American Civil Liberties Union however is more concerned with the end of affirmative action programs. Their statement that affirmative action “truly promotes equal opportunity” is the most ridiculous one I have heard from them in quite some time. If a State sponsored school told white students they would be admitted over black or Hispanic students with better grades, would that be considered an “equal opportunity” for those students who were passed over? Of course not. How then could the opposite be true?

The Colorado Civil Rights Initiative website has it right when it states:

President John F. Kennedy first introduced the nation to the concept of “affirmative action” in March 1961. Executive Order 10925 stated that “affirmative action” must be taken to “ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” Kennedy’s message was simple – treat all people equally, without regard to race.

In September of 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson reiterated this sentiment in Executive Order 11246. Johnson maintained “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.”

Affirmative action began as a movement to guarantee equal opportunity for all without regards to race or gender. In recent decades however it has been used as a footstool to elevate one group of people above another in order to have the appearance of equality, with no attention being paid to the lack of equality these programs actually promote.

Alan Keyes has said “Preferential affirmative action patronizes American blacks, women, and others by presuming that they cannot succeed on their own. Preferential affirmative action does not advance civil rights in this country.”

I wholeheartedly agree. The only way to create a color-blind society is to adopt
color-blind policies.

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ACLU, Affirmative Action, Constitution, Features, Fourteenth Amendment, Liberals, Politics, Racism