Beware using 'racist' label in racial preferences battle

Thomas Bray:

The State Board of Canvassers, bowing to political correctness, recently refused to approve a ballot measure that would prohibit racial preferences in public hiring and state university admissions -- even though the Secretary of State's office found that the petition had gained far more than the 351,000 signatures necessary.

As a result, backers of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, who turned in a massive 500,000 signatures, are once again being forced to appeal to the courts to allow their measure to go before the voters in 2006. Much the same thing happened last year, when opponents claimed the petition was misleadingly worded. MCRI won its court appeal, but time had run out for a campaign.

Now the issue is back. That's not surprising: Polls have consistently shown support for banning government use of race-based preferences in the area of 60 percent. That doesn't make the referendum a slam dunk. The entire Michigan establishment -- universities, activists, big labor, big business and big media -- is mobilizing to defend the existing racial spoils system.

And anybody who favors ending racial preferences can count on being smeared as "racist," at least if the tellingly named group By Any Means Necessary, or BAMN, has anything to do with it.

BAMN's leader appears to be Shanta Driver, a Wayne State University Law School graduate and labor activist, but its structure and funding sources are unclear. Jesse Jackson has spoken to several of its Michigan rallies.

BAMN makes no apologies for its radical tactics. "We will make use of the law when and where we can, but never subordinate our struggle to it," declares BAMN on its Web site, which also claims that the MCRI leadership is racist. In Michigan, BAMN shadowed the MCRI petition gatherers, used bullhorns to verbally menace signers and organized raucous demonstrations to browbeat the four-person Board of Canvassers.

The board got the message: Its two Democrats voted against allowing the initiative to go forward, while one of the Republicans, Lyn Bankes, was persuaded to abstain. Even though use of the race card is wearing distinctly thin hereabouts, it's still fatal for public figures to be labeled racist, even when there isn't a shred of evidence to support the charge.

A more moderate coalition of business, labor, community and church leaders, called One United Michigan, styles itself the good cop in the fight against the initiative. "We have nothing to do with BAMN, and we have consistently criticized their tactics," says spokesman David Waymire.

But when asked whether One United Michigan thinks the backers of the MCRI petition are racist, Waymire responds only that "we certainly wouldn't characterize everybody on the other side that way," then launches into an extended discussion of how racism is still alive and well in modern-day America.

"To think otherwise just isn't realistic," he concludes.

True enough. But in 1992, Bill Clinton cemented the white moderate vote by criticizing Sister Souljah for her race-baiting tactics. It will be interesting to see if One United Michigan and the media have the courage to do the same.

Just how racist is it, after all, to demand that "the state not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race...."? Back in the days of Jim Crow, anybody who believed the opposite was considered the racist.

Roberts’s Restraint

Racial Profiling For Dollar$

“End Race Preferences”

Uncivil “Civil-Rights” Group