As remarked, the passage of MCRI remains a welcome development from yesterday. As Brian Dickerson in the Detroit Free Press commented:
By midsummer, five months before the debate over affirmative action came roiling to a boil, Democrats, Republicans and 200 other organizations purporting to represent practically every identifiable interest group in the state had coalesced in opposition to the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative.
Comprising management and labor, retirees and college students, the pro-life Michigan Catholic Conference and the pro-choice Planned Parenthood of Michigan, the coalition to fight Proposal 2 was among the most formidable ever mustered in Michigan. Everybody who was anybody, it seemed, was standing shoulder-to-shoulder for affirmative action.
But in the end, it appeared everybody who was anybody hardly mattered. It was the nobodies who made their voices heard — the mostly middle-age, male and overwhelmingly white voters who the somebodies always worried would carry the day.
Remember, don’t call them “nobodies” – call them “racists.” We’ll see if Michigan is as adept in violating the law as the San Francisco government has been, in its repeated and open flouting of that law. It doesn’t seem that the Michigan Daily would mind, as Anthony Dick has noted. Amidst the early talk of apocalypse, the citation of California data remains spotty and often inaccurate. Nowhere do you hear that the percentage of Hispanic attendees has increased in the system, and while black attendance, it is true, is at a lower level than pre-209, it has been increasing in the years since its passage. A likely and welcome recourse for the University of Michigan would be an increase in meaningful minority recruitment efforts at the high school level. Instead of granting de facto preference to blacks and Hispanics who apply (over other applicants) a far better pursuit would be the location and encouragement of promising candidates at earlier levels. If these alarmed universities’ commitment to diversity is more than, ah, skin-deep, one would hope that they make meaningful efforts to press for the improvement of minority-heavy Michigan high schools.