Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative

In an interview in Madison, Wisconsin, Ward Connerly remarked,

“The larger problem is how to get more eligible black students with a 40 percent high school dropout rate in California. They don’t know about the importance of education (and) why it’s so important for them to accept responsibility for themselves. There is a basic cultural change that has to take place among black people,” said Connerly, who is black.

Similarly, Shelby Steele, Juan Williams, and others have observed the necessity for a profound change of approach and direction on the part of the black community. Indeed, Steele’s book White Guilt penetrates to the core of the problems of race in America. Both whites and blacks need to let go of the master, slave relationship, move beyond its perniciousness, struggle together to be free of the past iniquities that have harmed us all. Whites as well as blacks need a “basic cultural change.”

All the legal tinkering, Proposal 2, the battles at the level of the Supreme Court, will fail to set us free if we allow the radical elements on all sides to set the agenda, spend our energies merely reacting to the intrigues of racial demogogues and manipulators of hate.

Again, I call on my alma mater, the University of Michigan, if it is truly interested in the equal opportunity and success of black students, to organize, fund, and promote a conference, a summit of people of wisdom, people who have two feet on the ground, as soon as possible, with the following keynote speakers, hosted by U of M Professor Carl Cohen, if he is willing: Ward Connerly, Thomas Sowell, Bill Cosby, Shelby Steele, John McWhorter, Juan Williams, and MSU Professor William Allen.

Together, black and white, we can set a new tone, for now and the future. The 14% of black voters who approved MCRI might step forward and make their voices known, speak to all of us, let us know your experiences, why you voted as you did, what led you to believe as you did and do, help us to learn together from your insight and understanding. Do not let the worst elements of both races set the program for the future, which already has become clearly more recrimination and hatred, division and bitterness, exploitation and blame.

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

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Shelby Steele is a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of a number of books on racial and social affairs. A number of his articles are available online. His work is highly insightful into the tragic dynamics of black, white politics and racial preferences. A person from whom Michigan has much to learn.

The age of white guilt: and the disappearance of the black individual. Shelby Steele. Harper’s Magazine, November 30, 1999.

“Restraint should be the watchword in racial matters. We should help people who need help. There are, in fact, no races that need help; only individuals, citizens.”

Engineering Mediocrity October 30, 2000

“If the era of affirmative action is creeping toward an ignominious end, one of its lessons is that racial disparities ought never be occasions for social engineering. Absent a hard-earned parity of skills and abilities between the races, inclusion is necessarily a corruption.”

A Victory for White Guilt. Justice O’Connor and her colleagues embrace anti-Americanism. The Wall Street Journal, June 28, 2003.

“We deserve justices who can feel certain about the capacity of whites to be fair and the capacity of minorities to compete.”

Witness. Blacks, whites, and the politics of shame in America. SHELBY STEELE. OpinionJournal. October 26, 2005.

“Mutual witness will go on no matter what balances of power we strike. It is best to be open, and allow the “other’s” witness to inspire rather than shame.”

“Live” with Shelby Steele. The American Enterprise Online. April 2006.

“Now it’s time for blacks to make a similar transformation, to grow up, and take responsibility for their own future. If they don’t do it, they’re not going to have prospects that amount to very much. If they do do it, they’ll be able to succeed. We’ve come to a place in our history where the real onus for change is on black Americans.”

White Guilt. Frontpage Interview. Shelby Steele. FrontPageMagazine.com. July 27, 2006.

“Why do white liberals reject personal responsibility? Because the symbiosis between white guilt and black power requires that only whites be responsible for racial equality. Only by literally stealing responsibility from blacks can white liberals claim the moral authority that protects them from the racist stigma.”

Audio & Video Interviews online:

Shelby Steele. Audio Interview. 2006. Commonwealth Club of California

Shelby Steele. E-Race-ing Entitlements. October 10th, 1999. Grace Cathedral

Shelby Steele. Video. Bradley lecture. May 1, 2006

While Shelby Steele has other articles of note online, these focus perhaps the most usefully on our racial dilemmas of the moment, long and short.

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

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Thomas Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals. Encounter Books, 2005.

The approval by voters of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative corroborates Thomas Sowell’s observation in his Preface to the book, referring to “a growing willingness to consider views that differ from the racial orthodoxy that has prevailed largely unchallenged from the 1960s onward in intellectual circles and in the popular media.” The education, government, business, and media elites of Michigan all banded together to hammer into the population the same old tiresome racial orthodoxy, to no avail. The people had had over forty years of it, experienced it in lived life, and would have no more of it. By an overwhelming fifty-eight percent, they voted to change direction, try something different from the orthodoxy of the liberal elites. Thomas Sowell’s book Black Rednecks and White Liberals suggests further lines for reconsideration and change.

In this context, I believe the most interesting essays in the book are “The Real History of Slavery” and “Black Education: Achievements, Myths and Tragedies.” Rejecting the Kunte Kinte view of slavery found in Alex Haley’s Roots, Sowell emphasizes that slavery was a worldwide phenomenon practiced by virtually all peoples and nations, not at all exclusively by white Western nations. Sowell perceives why the contemporary discussion of slavery is usually so distorted:

“Why would anyone wish to arbitrarily understate an evil that plagued mankind for thousands of years, unless it was not this evil itself that was the real concern, but rather the present-day uses of that historic evil? Clearly, the ability to score ideological points against American society or Western civilization, or to induce guilt and thereby extract benefits from the white population today, are greatly enhanced by making enslavement appear to be a peculiarly American, or a peculiarly white, crime” (111).

All of this feeds directly into the radical politics of affirmative action racial preferences. It skews our understanding of the real historical evils of slavery and substitutes emotional Hollywood distortions for the complexity of human experience.

Narrowing the history of slavery from the long record reaching back over three thousands years, in Europe, Africa, China, India, every region of the world, it was nevertheless only the Western world that developed moral compunctions against slavery and launched a “bitter worldwide struggle, which lasted more than a century, to destroy the elaborate systems and institutions for the ownership and sale of human beings” (114). Of particular interest is Sowell’s discussion of slavery under Islamic societies, in North Africa and elsewhere, which enslaved far more people than were ever brought to the Western hemisphere. Cervantes in Don Quixote has an incredible account of his five-year enslavement after the battle of Lepanto in 1571. Sowell’s discussion throws interesting light on the conditions to which European and African slaves found themselves subjected. Many millions of Europeans and Africans were enslaved over the centuries in Islamic countries, facts that ought to be studied much more after 9/11.

Similarly, Sowell emphasizes it was black tribal leaders who practiced slavery “before, during, and after the white man arrived” (120). Connecting the real history of slavery with its distorted uses by those who today want to fight for racial spoils, Sowell writes,

“Yet what was peculiar about the West was not that it participated in the worldwide evil of slavery, but that it later abolished that evil, not only in Western societies but also in other societies subject to Western control or influence. This was possible only because the anti-slavery movement coincided with an era in which Western power and hegemony were at their zenith, so that it was essentially European imperialism which ended slavery. This idea might seem shocking, not because it does not fit the facts, but because it does not fit the prevailing vision of our time” (134-135).

Visions hang on beyond their time, beyond their usefulness, such has been the case with racial preferences, which are predicated on a distorted sense of actual historical slavery. By addressing the real history of slavery, Sowell restores the proper perspective needed to come to terms with the complexity of American slavery and the perspective needed to find new ways to work together today. He observes at one point “Africans did not treat Europeans any better than Europeans treated Africans. Neither can be exempted from moral condemnation applied to the other” (139). If Michigan is seeking a new understanding of equality, one place to begin might be to realize, as Sowell says elsewhere, the prevailing vision of slavery of the “morally self-anointed” is wrong. To find a new future, we must recognize our understanding of the past is flawed, reconsider its complexity, understand no one is blameless, and move forward together.

In “Black Education: Achievements, Myths and Tragedies,” Sowell reconsiders the prevailing vision of the actual history of black education and demonstrates that it too is much different from the skewed account so many politically motivated radicals and liberals use to justify failed educational programs and policies:

“The quest for esoteric methods of trying to educate black children proceeds as if such children had never been successfully educated before, when in fact there are concrete examples, both from history and from our own times, of schools that have been successful in educating black children, including those from low-income families. Yet the prevailing educational dogma is that you simply cannot expect children who are not middle class to do well on standardized tests, for all sorts of sociological and psychological reasons” (203).

Sowell further states that this dogma is false for both black and other minority children and discusses a number of outstanding schools reaching from after the Civil War to the present, such as the M Street School, later to become known as Dunbar High School in Washington, DC.

After a long survey of these and other schools, Sowell writes,

“What the record of successful minority schools shows, both in history and among contemporary schools, is that educational achievement is not foredoomed by economic or social circumstances beyond the school grounds, as the education establishment constantly strives to prove. Poverty, broken homes, and unruly environments are not to be ignored, downplayed or apologized for. But neither are the failings of others proof that the education establishment is doing its job right. Perfect students with perfect parents in a perfect society cannot learn things that they are not being taught–and that includes an increasing number of basic things in our public schools” (217).

While the howls of protest to this passage might be the usual ones from the education establishment, I would argue his stress on working with students where they are and expecting “work and discipline” (221) from them is a no-nonsense approach that ought to be tried more often than not, instead of the latest pitying, enabling, undermining educational theory that asks little or nothing of kids and gets little or nothing in return. Higher expectations of their families, whether single parent or not, ought to play a part, though Sowell dismisses the idea that without parental involvement there is no hope for the child, insisting that the individual student can take charge of his or her life and achieve despite the family situation.

Excoriating the victimhood approach to education, Sowell laments that “the history of successful black schools has attracted virtually no interest from either historians or educators. That history does not advance any contemporary political agenda, though it might help advance the education of a whole generation of black students” (225). Far from blaming all educational problems of black students on racism, the usual liberal scapegoat, Sowell has no patience with such facile excuses and lays the blame squarely on the students themselves: “By and large, black students do not work as hard as white students, much less Asian students” (228). He goes on to blame a culture of non-achievement, comparing it to red-neck and lower-class whites and Asians who suffer from “the same counterproductive attitudes toward education” which are “just as self-defeating.” Failure is not restricted to any particular pigmentation or race, nor are the real reasons for such failure always unique to any particular race.

In a fine section of this chapter on education, Sowell highlights the views of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, documenting that their attitudes on educational expectations and other matters were much closer than the common politicized opinion today would have it. The necessary resources and exemplary individuals run rife throughout black history and experience. I would argue what is needed is for more people to hear and respect such scholars as Thomas Sowell, learn from them, and work together to chart a new path together into the future.

In his conclusion Sowell essentially challenges educational leaders and students “to work harder and abandon the counterproductive notion that seeking educational excellence is ‘acting white’” (244). He ends his essay on black education in a way that calls to mind Bill Cosby’s recent addresses wherein Cosby has said more studies are not needed. The problems are known. The black community is in crisis and needs to take action:

“Despite the heartening achievements of some black schools, which have repeatedly demonstrated what is possible even with children from low-income backgrounds, the general picture of the education of black students is bleak. Much of what is said–and not said–about the education of black students reflects the political context, rather than the educational facts. Whites walk on eggshells for fear of being called racists, while many blacks are preoccupied with protecting the image of black students, rather than protecting their future by telling the blunt truth. It is understandable that some people are concerned about image, about what in private life might be expressed as: “What will the neighbors think?” But, when your children are dying, you don’t worry about what the neighbors think” (245).

Though bleak, attitudes are changing, will continue to change, will, as Ward Connerly has remarked, take time to change, creating a new climate of expectations and performance, on all sides. The passage of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) registers such change. Neighbors of goodwill do exist, are distressed, worried, and concerned, willing to help, where they can, if allowed. It needs to be said much more often that 14% of black voters approved the proposal. They are people who want much of what Sowell discusses in terms of education for their children and community. These two essays ought to be read by anyone serious about assessing where we are after the passage of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, and where, together, we are all going from here.

Frederick Glaysher

Michigan’s media has the opportunity to set a new tone instead of the divisive misrepresentations of the opponents of the will of the people during the entire debate over MCRI.

Please start reporting honestly and with a sense of balance, allowing real discussion and debate to take place. It would be refreshing and would help Michigan move forward beyond state-sponsored discrimination.

At a minimum people seriously interested in seeing positive change in race relations in Michigan should read as much as possible of the following books by some of the nation’s most outstanding black scholars and writers:

Ward Connerly. Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences.

Juan Williams. Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure that are Undermining Black America–and What We Can Do About It.

John McWhorter. Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America.

John McWhorter, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America.

Shelby Steele. A Dream Deferred. The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America.

Shelby Steele. White Guilt: How Blacks & Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era.

Thomas Sowell. The Quest for Cosmic Justice.

Thomas Sowell. Black Rednecks, White Liberals. Especially the chapters “The Real History of Slavery” and “Black Education: Achievments, Myths and Tragedies.”

The people have clearly expressed a desire for a new direction toward a new future. Far from the rhetoric of moving backwards, we have the opportunity to move forward, together, towards a new definition of what it means to be a human being, an American, a citizen of the great State of Michigan.

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

“Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

–

Frederick Douglass

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

FROM Robert Earl Hayden’s Collected Poems. Edited by Frederick Glaysher. New York: Liveright, 1985.

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

Both the Detroit News and the Free Press, indeed most of the media in Michigan, have sunk to the level of negative propaganda against the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, manipulating and suppressing open and free discussion.

For instance, unable to address the real issue of MCRI, the 14th Amendment requirement for equal treatment under the law, Laura Berman  of the Detroit Newsshifts to straw man arguments that attempt to divert discussion to bogus claims to scare white female voters and play on their emotions.

Many outstanding black scholars and writers have come out against racial preferences for many years now. I urge Michigan voters to consider the work of Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, John McWhorter, Juan Williams, MSU Professor William Allen (See his website Toward a Fair Michigan), and Ward Connerly, among others. Their testimony is that racial preferences do not help young people in the black community. Instead of the social engineering we have had for over forty-five years, we need to move forward together to addressing the real problems, not assauging misguided, demeaning white guilt.

Further, over 120,000 black citizens of Michigan signed the petition to place it on the ballot because they recognize racial preferences do not help their young people nor community, yet we have watched month after month, year after year, one fraudulent attempt after another to disenfranchise and discredit them.

MCRI is not about white versus black. It’s about how do we move together towards a new stage of race relations built on equal treatment and opportunity for all. What we have been doing has not worked, has even had devastating effect as Bill Cosby and others have so rightly acknowledged during the last few years. More of the same will only make matters worse.

Far from returning to segregation, a Yes vote on MCRI will open the door to a new future for all of Michigan’s citizens, grounded in equal treatment before the law, equal opportunity, and individual responsibility.

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve MCRI
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

Along with Ralph Ellison, Robert Hayden achieved the deepest insight into what it means to be a human being, an American, a citizen of Michigan, an understanding that still rings true today, decades after his passing. I can’t believe for a single moment that Robert Hayden would ever have approved of what racial preferences have become, a coercive, deceptive, corrupt, separatist system of discrimination, opposed to the hardwon academic excellence of young people, supposedly for a higher good, while lowering intellectual standards to justify injustice.

Robert Hayden. 1913-1980. Born and raised in Paradise Valley, Detroit
Professor at Fisk University, University of Michigan
Consultant in Poetry to The Library of Congress, 1976-1977

EXCERPT FROM “Words in the Mourning Time”

“We must go on struggling to be human,
though monsters of abstraction
police and threaten us.

Reclaim now, now renew the vision of
a human world where godliness
is possible and man
is neither gook nigger honkey wop nor kike

but man

permitted to be man.”

FROM Robert Earl Hayden’s Collected Poems. Edited by Frederick Glaysher. New York: Liveright, 1985.

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative MCRI
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

NOT to be missed…. One of the most important interviews for MCRI, reaching a very large audience….

Jennifer Gratz Defeats Debbie Dingell on the Frank Beckmann Show, WJR 760AM radio:

Listen to Jennifer Gratz expose the scare tactics that Proposal 2 opponents use and catch Debbie Dingell, co-chair of One United Michigan, in outright lies about their campaign finances.

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

John McWhorter. Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America. Gotham, 2006.

John McWhorter’s Winning the Race has a strong sociological approach to the issues of black America, surveying the history of the development of the inner cities and the welfare system, leading to the dependence that later found expression in affirmative action and racial preferences. My background being more literary in nature, I do not have the grounding for assessing McWhorter’s sociological arguments and data and will focus on his discussion of racial preference and its dynamics, of which I have personal experience, on the ground shall we say, and extensive knowledge and interest.

Referring to radical race elites and leaders, McWhorter states,

What people like this are seeking is, sadly, not what they claim to be seeking. They seek one thing: indignation for its own sake. And that means that the alienation that they are expressing is disconnected from current reality (5).

Highlighting the psychological drive of the protest impulse, McWhorter continues, “This is therapeutic alienation: alienation unconnected to, or vastly disproportionate to, real-life stimulus, but maintained because it reinforces one’s sense of psychological legitimacy, via defining oneself against an oppressor characterized as eternally depraved” (6).

He refers often throughout the book to the implicit theater entailed in such attitudes and the misguided strategy of relying on such theater for advancement and self-definition, instead of “rolling their sleeves up and working out concrete plans for change” (7). Putting aside the emphasis of more traditional black leaders, such as Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, on personal responsibility and initiative, increasingly after the 1960s civil rights generation, “the main culprit was whitey and his ‘systemic racism’” (13). I cannot help feeling it’s an old story, but, one that cannot be told too often, still today, given the continuing mutual recrimination and the evasion of the obvious.

The more interesting chapters to me deal directly with affirmative action, racial preference, and the serious damage done by race elites allowing for years the continuation of the “acting white” mentality to spread and pollute the springs of self-reliance, independence, and education for black youth, in their inmost consciousness:

“To understand that we are dealing with therapeutic alienation rather than racism brings us to implications for grappling with the black-white achievement gap in the present and future…. To set the bar lower for black students out of a sense that the achievement gap is due to socioeconomics is mistaken. Because the factor is not socioeconomic but cultural and self-perpetuating, the lowered bar only deprives black students and parents of any reason to learn how to hit the highest note. Much of the time, there is not even any way for black people to know what it would actually be to perform at that level–because they never have to” (263).

A devastating critique of a devastating system, one that all people, white and black, have participated in creating and maintaining, much to the detriment of ourselves and our young people. McWhorter’s honesty about racial matters and race preferences is truly admirable. How else can we all come to understand what the situation truly is and then decide what to do about it? Alas, one can almost count on one hand the scholars intelligent and honest enough to state simply the truth about many “black students on campus”:

“So few of them have grades or test scores high enough to qualify under the regular evaluation procedure. In response to claims from the occasional whistleblower that standards are being lowered for black students, administrators are trained to insist that this is not true. Yet, simple and readily available data show that each year, there is but a sliver of black students with the grades and test scores considered sine qua non for serious consideration if students were white or Asian” (264).

Laying the blame squarely on “teen culture” and the failure of black and white parents and leaders to have sufficiently high expectations for all students, McWhorter faces what virtually no one else in America will. It’s our fault. We’ve got the pernicious system we’ve created, along with all the social and personal destruction that goes with it. I like the way he puts it at one point: “a new sense of black identity in the sixties has led to a quiet cultural disconnect from the ‘school thing’” (273). Instead of “self-defeating cultural patterns,” McWhorter argues for the cultural patterns that produce success for all people. For decades, Caribbean and African immigrants, Asian boat people, and others who have entered urban schools have flown past the kids held back by the misguided ideas of the race elites: “As long as black students have to do only so well, they will do only so well” (295). Like Ward Connerly, John McWhorter clearly advocates expecting more of black kids, knowing only then can society and educators elicit from students their highest potential.

In the light of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) and the misleading allegations surrounding gender that have been used to scare white females into voting against it, McWhorter asks a simple question that Michigan women ought to consider: “Whites listening to defenses based on ‘diversity’ should ask themselves a simple question: Would you allow this of your own children?” (308). Cutting to the quick and ending his book on the hopeful note that black kids are every bit as capable of competing and achieving as anybody else, McWhorter quite rightly states, lampooning radical race elites who benefit from the affirmative action gravy train, “The simple fact is that America is quietly getting past race despite the best efforts of the Soul Patrol to pretend otherwise” (377).

The work of John McWhorter ought to be even more widely known than it already is in Michigan and throughout the country. On November 8th, Michigan’s concerned citizens should turn more to his understanding of what went wrong and what is required for success.

If the University of Michigan is truly interested in the equal opportunity and success of black students, I challenge my alma mater to organize a conference, a summit of people who have two feet on the ground, as soon as possible after November 8th, with the following keynote speakers, hosted by U of M Professor Carl Cohen: Ward Connerly, Thomas Sowell, John McWhorter, Shelby Steele, Bill Cosby, Juan Williams, and MSU Professor William Allen.

Ending racial preferences in Michigan and throughout the Nation is essential for creating an atmosphere of high and equal expectations for all our children, capable of Winning the Race, in all senses of the phrase. Together we will find our way towards a new meaning of what it is to be an American, as did Ralph Ellison in Invisible Man, not white OR black, but white AND black. And all the shades of humanity beyond.

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

Opinion: Vote “No” on Proposal 2. Jennifer M. Granholm, Michigan Governor. Dennis W. Archer, Former Detroit Mayor.

U. of M’s own statistics just recently released by the Center for Equal Opportunity prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that less qualified minorities have a 70 to 1 advantage over white and Asian applicants with the same and superior SAT and ACT test scores.http://www.ceousa.org/

The Supreme Court was wrong in the Dred Scott decision, and in many other decisions, including the Grutter vs. U of M decision. It was, however, right in the Gratz vs. U of M decision. “Diversity” is a code word for racial quotas.

Your personal benefitting from an unjust system does not make that system just. Thank you for admitting that it was only through discrimination that you both got to where you are.

“Leveling the playing field” is an euphemism for discrimination and social engineering, both of which always produces victims and injured parties. What you’re saying is you and other government and educational elites have the infinite wisdom to decide the fate of other people’s lives based on their arbitrary gender or skin color, and don’t care about the “collateral damage” of your fellow citizens.

Allowing discrimination perverts the entire social order by undermining the rewarding of excellence and the arduous self-sacrifice and devotion to higher ideals that produce it. Much of Michigan’s troubles are the result of the fanatasy world of pseudo-values that underpin affirmative action and its many corruptions.

John McWhorter has documented and discussed extensively how affirmative action undermines the self-development of minorities by removing the INCENTIVE for serious, sustained study and hard work. It’s a lie that affirmative action helps students. It doesn’t. It rewards failure, laziness, excuses, and hypocrisy.

Your Opinion is full of cliches, half truths, and distortions. Please read the books of intelligent, outstanding black Americans such as Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, John McWhorter, Ward Connerly and others who truly care about helping the kids in our urban areas instead of the 86% middle and upper-middle class blacks kids who use affirmative action to cheat their way into U of M.

You two clearly only care about maintaining your privileged positions, fat incomes, and milking more money and influence from supporting the destructive, discriminatory system of racial preference.

Frederick Glaysher
Life-long Rochester Hills, Citizen of MICHIGAN!!!
Editor, Robert Hayden’s Collected Prose, U. of M. Press, 1984
University of Michgian Alumnus, 1980 & 1981
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

The website of the Western Michigan University College Republicans has turned up a number of interesting links that Michigan voters might want to consider in evaluating BAMN’s anti-MCRI position and its association with One “United” Michigan, which continues to slander and smear MCRI in the media, instead of addressing the ideas and issues. One “United” Michigan now has another despicable negative ad on TV this evening, entirely distorting the motives of Ward Connerly and Jennifer Gratz.

The author of the WMU College Republicans asks the obvious question that should occur to any thoughtful citizen struggling to decide how to vote on MCRI: “Why doesn’t the vaunted watchdog press expose this group for what it is?”

For other comments on BAMN, see my blog below.

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

YES on 2 Hits the Airwaves!

(Lansing) - Today, the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative began its “YES on 2″ TV ad campaign. The ad features MCRI Executive Director Jennifer Gratz and ACRC Chairman Ward Connerly.

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

Black commentator MYCHAL MASSIE offers an insightful critique of both Democrats and Republicans and makes these observations on MCRI on WorldNetDaily.com

“Republicans in Michigan are opposing the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative. Said initiative would allow for every Michigander to compete on a fair and level playing field according to their respective skills and abilities, regardless of race. But the Michigan Republican leadership and candidates would rather penalize students and prospective employees by placing those who may be less qualified, as long as they can meet their color quotas. It should also be pointed out that the judges who have ruled in favor of race-coded indexing were appointed by Republican presidents. I expect liberals to see nothing wrong in denying those more qualified an opportunity deserved based on meritocracy, but I have serious issues when I see it in my own party.”

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

At this juncture of public debate and lack thereof, given the media’s censoring real discussion and having gone over almost completely into negative propaganda against MCRI, I think many Michigan citizens might find it helpful to consider the testimony of MSU Professor William Allen, who happens to be a black person, and his and Barbara Grutter’s organization Toward a Fair Michigan:

(1) Statistical “evidence” of fraud is not only faulty, but is based on racist assumptions about black voters, and

(2) No credence should be given to a biased report of a government agency that, improperly, publicly advocated against the initiative.

Friend of the Court AMICUS BRIEF filed by Prof. W.B. Allen & TAFM

One United Michigan and BAMN representatives slander TAFM & tries “to get everyone to boycott TAFM” debates, complaining: “they [expert speakers] aren’t campaign trained people typically …”

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

Racial Preferences Mean Big Government. By Thomas L. Krannawitter. The Claremont Institute.

Here’s a radical idea applicable to MCRI:

“all citizens possess equal natural rights and that constitutional government’s only legitimate purpose is equal protection of those rights.”

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

Race-Colored Classes. The University of Michigan badly needs MCRI. By Michael O’Brien. October 30, 2006.

A student at the University of Michigan has published a revealing article on the carnival atmosphere that prevails at U of M surrounding Proposal 2, MCRI. Alas, all too true. He mentions Mary Sue Coleman praising the Black Action Movement’s strike of classes in 1970. An outrageous affair that typified what Shelby Steele discusses in his new book White Guilt: How Blacks & Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era. Incidentally, Robert Hayden refused BAM’s fascistic tactics, crossed its picket lines, and held classes, believing depriving students of education was not the way to improve education. Appalling that a U of M president would praise BAM….

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

Proposal 2 effects on state debated. Free Press. October 27, 2006.  BY ALEJANDRO BODIPO-MEMBA

Instead of social engineering, here’s a novel idea:

David Littmann, a consultant and former chief economist with Comerica Bank who retired in 2005, says Michigan would be in a better position to compete against other states for new manufacturing operations if Proposal 2 passes.

“A yes vote is pro jobs,” he said. “You want as flexible a job market in a market economy as you can get. That’s why all the decisions of the foreign auto manufacturers to locate in this country have gone South or West, where there is freedom to choose talent. It shouldn’t be dictated by skin color.”

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

Michigan Association of Scholars. [Press Release and Open Letter to People of Michigan]

The Michigan Association of Scholars is the Michigan affiliate of the National Association of Scholars

2175 General Motors Rd., Milford, MI  48380

Debate Should be Focused on Issues not Hyperbole

(Lansing) - Today, the Michigan Association of Scholars released a letter from 30 scholars and others, including the Chair and Vice Chair of the United States Civil Rights Commission, urging all participants in the debate about Proposal 2 to keep the debate focused on the merits of Proposal 2.

“Though we as scholars usually avoid factious political fights it is important that sometimes we enter public debate.  Today we do just that to ask both sides of Proposal 2 to focus on the actual effects of the Proposal rather than on scoring rhetorical points,” said Professor Howard Schwartz, President Michigan Association of Scholars.

“All voters regardless of party or ideology deserve to hear a discussion of  the initiative based on its merits, rather than on false claims that have been made. For example, some opponents of Proposal 2 have incorrectly asserted that proposal 2 will affect breast, cervical or prostate cancer screening clinics or that Proposal 2 may affect domestic abuse shelters. These claims are simply not true,” said Professor Schwartz.

The MAS letter is attached to this announcement.

The Michigan Association of Scholars (MAS) is an organization of professors, graduate students, college administrators and trustees, and independent scholars committed to rational discourse as the foundation of academic life in a free and democratic society.

—–

AN OPEN LETTER

TO THE PEOPLE OF MICHIGAN

Some of us support the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative; some of us oppose it.   But all of us oppose statements that mislead the public.   That is why we want to set the record straight on several points.

The MCRI will not ban affirmative action in general.   It will ban “programs that give preferential treatment to groups or individuals based on their race, gender, color, ethnicity or national origin for public employment, education or contracting purposes.”   Left intact are affirmative action programs that reach out to women and minorities, that seek to eliminate bias in testing, and in fact all such programs that do not give preferential treatment as described above.

The MCRI is not anti-civil rights.   In fact, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, affirmative action as established by Executive Order 11246, and the MCRI are all consistent in mandating that hiring, etc. be “without regard to” race, etc.

The MCRI does not oppose equal opportunity; rather it supports that concept.

The MCRI will not affect breast or cervical or prostate cancer screening clinics, and it will not affect domestic abuse shelters.

The MCRI will not affect the participation of women and girls in sports programs.

The MCRI will not affect pay equity for women, fair housing and lending programs for women and minorities, or private financial aid and student loans for minority students.

The MCRI will not affect programs based upon socio-economic status.

Once again, the MCRI will only affect programs that give preferential treatment based on race, gender, color, ethnicity, or national origin, and only in the three public contexts of employment, education, or contracting.

We welcome honest, thoughtful debate on civil rights, affirmative action, and equal opportunity.   But we oppose erroneous statements such as those corrected above.

Signatories to “An Open Letter to the People of Michigan” [Click HERE for Full Singature list]

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

John McWhorter has online a number of articles relating to racial preferences and affirmative action. They’re available from his website at the Manhattan Institute. He’s the author of two outstanding books that seriously probe racial matters in our country and how we can, to quote the subtitle of Winning the Race, move “Beyond the Crisis in Black America.” Here are some excerpts and links to specific articles relevant to MCRI:

“eliminate affirmative action in admissions.”

Ending affirmative action will promote “richer interracial contact among students.”

“patronizingly exempted from serious competition.”

“diversity” does not “encourage interracial bonding.”

“Our diversity double talk perpetuates black mediocrity.”

Justice Powell: “Nowhere in his [1978 Bakke] decision did he call for the de facto racial quota systems that universities have built up since.”

“Racial preferences since 1978 have meant admitting middle-class black students under much lower standards than white ones.”

“Lowered standards lead to lower performance.”

“The person you pity is not someone you truly respect.”

Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton: Not leaders, but personalities. “Let’s look for real leaders.”

“Today we need a new largeness of spirit.”

See full articles:

Diversity’s No Longer the Point, Is It? Washington Post, 12-8-02

The Campus Diversity Fraud, Winter 2002

What’s Holding Blacks Back?, Winter 2001

Interview in Frontpage Magazine, Feb. 2006: Winning the Race

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

Securing racial spoils. By Shikha Dalmia/Henry Payne. October 26, 2006.

The Washington Times has an excellent article today regarding BAMN and its surrogate One United Michigan “cynically playing to women’s fears.” Definitely worth reading. The sky has not fallen in California, Washington, Texas, nor Florida…. Michigan on November 7, the entire nation thereafter….

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

Frontpage magazine.com has an article on BAMN that might help Michigan voters understand what type of group has been trying to deprive them of the right to vote for more than three years on MCRI. See also the INCRIMINATING BAMN documentation of its links to the Revolutionary Workers League, a Trotsky organization based in Detroit.

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

Wayne State University Law School Dean Frank Wu: “Around 2050 or so, we will cease to have a single identifiable racial majority.”

All the more reason we must base our society on the common standard of the 14th Amendment, equal protection under the law, not racial preferences based on endless discriminations over pigmentation.

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative MCRI
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

The Ann Arbor News *almost* achieved a breakthrough, instead of PC rhetoric…. I recommend its editor and all journalists read and reflect more deeply on the work or recent addresses of John McWhorter, Shelby Steele, William Allen, Thomas Sowell, Bill Cosby, Juan Williams, and Ward Connerly, among others….

Racial preference is discrimination. There is no honest way around that fact.  It abrogates the 14th Amendment. Michigan’s citizens cannot look to government, education, business, or the media, so thoroughly exemplified by the Ann Arbor News, to speak to the real issue and have the courage to allow true free speech and discussion about it.

The interesting question is, during the next couple of weeks, will a Michigan editor and newspaper with a conscience and sense of integrity step forward to speak to the people, including the over 120,000 black citizens who signed the petition to end the pernicious sytem of discrimination that affects today virtually every walk of life.

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

The Center for Equal Opportunity has recently released statistics on racial preference admissions at the University of Michigan. Anyone interested in MCRI might want to consider the results:

October 17, 2006 -
CEO responds to University of Michigan
[More Info- Download PDF]

New Studies Document Racial Preferences in Undergrad, Law, and Med School Admissions
[More Info - Download PDF]

Racial and Ethnic Preferences in Undergraduate Admissions at the University of Michigan
[Download PDF]

Racial and Ethnic Admission Preferences at the University of Michigan Law School
[Download PDF]

Racial and Ethnic Admission Preferences at the University of Michigan Medical School
[Download PDF]

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

Jennifer Gratz on Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor. MCRI

For further insight into what type of group has been opposing MCRI, click HERE

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

Last night I attended the debate at the University Presbyterian Church in Rochester Hills. An entirely white audience of predominately grey-haired liberals, it was a highly manipulated forum. Questons were only allowed written on cards, which were then screened, deliberately misread, and censored in order to give preference to BAMN’s surrogate One United Michigan.

BAMN and its surrogate regularly use “straw man” arguments to divert discussion away from the real issue: The 14th Amendment requirement for equal treatment under the law. The tactic was blatantly obvious last night. Unfortunately, it appeared that only Rev. Zeile, a supporter of MCRI realized it, addressing the real issues.

Through the very “strategy” they use, BAMN and One United Michigan reveal the issue for them and other opponents of fairness under the law is really control and power, not equality and justice.

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

I participated in a forum in Chelsea, Michigan, on October 12th, sponsored by One World One Family. A small town west of Ann Arbor, people attending were mostly white, liberal, and well intentioned. As Shelby Steele has written, we don’t want to be racist or have it thought that we might be. The stigmata of our age. Which feeds directly into the whole problem of white guilt and the manner in which race elites exploit it for social and material gain.

Unfortunately, while all that is going on, it’s the children that no one is thinking about, as Ward Connerly has said. Juan Williams in his book Enough points out that in about 1950 78% of black families had two parents; today, 34%. Obviously, something has gone wrong that can’t be blamed on race. The entire civil rights movement has taken place while this tremendous upheaval has had devastating impact on the lives of millions of black children, especially urban kids.

Yet we want to help. So we rig the admission system for the University of Michigan, even though 86% of the kids are from middle to upper class black families. Since about 1 out of 5 blacks now live outside the urban centers, how does that help the children in Detroit?

Bill Cosby’s no nonsense talks during the last few years, as well as all the sober, realistic calls by many black leaders and scholars for personal responsibility, confront the real issues involved in the plight of children. Not vague abstractions about racial injustice a hundred years ago and reparations forever after.

Robert Hayden recounts in his Collected Prose how Pa Hayden told him,

“Get something in your head and they can’t take it away from you. Stay in school, don’t let me catch you hanging around in the streets. I don’t want you to live like I’ve had to live. You don’t have to live like this. Go to school.” (21)

Strong, tough, moral advice from about the early 1930 generation of blacks, the 78%. Hayden speaks too somewhere about “black respectability,” wanting to be thought well of by the neighborhood and society. Robert Hayden earned his way into college in the 1930s. Someone didn’t give him a demeaning racial preference. Government programs can’t provide children with a family that guides them through the turmoil of life. It ought to be abundantly clear that government can only destroy families through misguided good intentions and transgressing its own most important principles.

Racial preferences don’t help children. They only make white people feel good.

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

I’ve been rereading a report by the Michigan Association of Scholars published in 1998. It quotes Professor Carl Cohn:

“Preference by race is given systematically at the U. of M. to applicants for admission . . . The evidence for this is overwhelming, the conclusion is indisputable.”

The report “Racial Preferences in Michigan Higher Education” discusses the statistics obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from several Michigan universities, all of which are truly “overwhelming” and “indisputable.” Here’s another sentence from the report, regarding comparative SAT and ACT scores:

“This is incontrovertible evidence of the use of racial preferences to increase black enrollment at Michigan’s public universities.”

On “collateral damage,” “broken eggs”:

“Admission officers essentially reach down into the applicant pool and pull up certain students. this practice generally results in at least some white and Asians with better credentials than black and Hispanic enrollees being rejected from the same schools, despite their superior qualifications.”

In general, “The degree of racial preferences exhibited at both UM and UMD [Dearborn] are astonishingly large.” A student was 174 times more likely to be admitted if black!

Six year graduation rates for 1995 were also not comparable: 87% for whites, 66% for blacks.

Well, some might say, it was the system that the Supreme Court ruled against in 2003, while permitting racial preferences at the Law School. Now we have “holistic essays” to protect against social engineering and discrimination….

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative MCRI
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

John McWhorter, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America. 2000. MCRI

In his book Losing the Race, John McWhorter discusses the cause of the achievement of black students reaching a “plateau” in the late 1980s, beyond which it has yet to rise:

“In this light, the maintenance of affirmative action nothing less than hinders the completion of the very task it was designed to accomplish, because it deprives black students of a basic incentive to reach for that highest bar. If every black student in the country knows that not even the most selective schools in the country require the very top grades or test scores of black students, that fine universities just below tis level will readily admit them with even a B+/B dossier by virtue of their “leadership qualities” or “spark,” and that even just a better-than-decent application file will grant them admission to solid second-tier selective schools, then what incentive is there for any but the occasional highly driven black student to devote his most deeply committed effort to school?” (232-233)

Answer: No incentive whatsoever…. This is exactly the result I saw for years as a college instructor. Minority students had a sense of entitlement about grades and didn’t believe they had to work as hard as other students to achieve them. The stories of this playing out in the classroom are virtually endless. Professor Carl Cohen has published a recent open letter to President Mary Sue Coleman of U of M relating how one professor was essentially forced by a student playing the race card to increase his grade, with no real support from the university administration. I, like many educators, saw and heard of such situations happening many times. Sadly, the person who is truly hurt the most by such a decline of standards is the individual student, though they do not realize it. The overall impact on the morale of a university department can be tremendous and only lead to a further decline in standards.

John McWhorter, to his credit, has the rare honesty to admit how these dynamics affected him personally:

“I can attest, for example, that in secondary school I quite deliberately refrained from working to my highest potential because I knew that I would be accepted to even top universities without doing so. Almost any black child knows from an early age that there is something called affirmative action which means that black students are admitted to schools under lower standards than white; I was aware of this at at least [sic] the age of ten.”

If we really care about our children, we expect from them their best effort, that they strive for excellence, not be happy with “good enough,” which is never good enough, especially at this time given our nation’s history and Michigan’s many economic and social problems.

Racial preferences have always been and have become a corrupt and demeaning system undermining the education of the very students who supposedly they were created to help. Instead of keeping the best interest of students foremost in mind, politicians, educators, “leaders,” and others drinking at the affirmative action trough are thinking only about the appearance of being “progressive” and for the “down trodden” or whatever. None of this will ever begin to change until the pernicious system is ended and individuals are held accountable for their own actions, instead of blaming their failings on others. Equal protection under the law also means equal obligations, duties, and responsibilities.

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

Listen to Jennifer on “Rightalk Radio” with Curt Allen. MCRI Executive Director, Jennifer Gratz was recently interviewed on “Talking Politics and Law” with Curt Allen. Jennifer does a great job at explaining the issue and discussing some of the opposition that MCRI has faced.

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

Instead of white people feeling good, the “masta’ takin’ care o’ da darkies” through white guilt, social engineering, and rigging the numbers, America needs to move on to a higher level of interracial understanding that respects people by expecting something of all its citizens, equally.

In literary terms, racial preferences are tantamount to Ralph Ellison’s battle royal. It’s long past time for America, U of M, and other universities to stop handing out certificates engraved with letters of gold, “Keep This Nigger-Boy Running.”

Frederick Glaysher
Editor, Robert Hayden’s Collected Prose. University of Michigan Press, 1984.

Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

See “Why racial preferences are a product of white guilt.”
An open letter to my collegues and students at the University of Michigan
By Prof. Carl Cohen, 10/4/06

Professor William Allen. Conditions for Cultural Violence. MCRI

Regarding the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), MSU Professor William Allen makes an observation in his August 2, 2006 Interview with Barbara Grutter that many people of all backgrounds might want to reflect on for the seriousness of the political and social situation with which BAMN and its surrogate One United Michigan presents to voters:

“It’s really important for us not to lose sight of the fact people who play with race, the way BAMN is playing with race, the way the One United Michigan is playing with race, are the people who create the conditions for the cultural violence that has been historically such a probelm in our society, and I am a defendant intervenor because I want to call a halt now to those kinds of practices and let people know it is not true that you can pursue politics by any means necessary.”

TAFM Chair Expresses Concern about Legal Attacks on the MCRI Click here to view

Or see top left corner of TAFM’s website Toward a Fair Michigan

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

MCRI Releases I’m Proud radio ad
Listen to the ad that is so effective, our opponents
don’t want you to hear it. Click HERE

http://www.michigancivilrights.org/radio.html

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

To understand what type of group has been opposing the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative for the last three or four years, concerned citizens might want to watch the brief video of BAMN members disrupting the Board of Canvassers meeting at the State Capitol on December 14, 2005.

Click HERE to view it.

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

Toward A Fair Michigan. Creating the Civic Forum to Discuss Affirmative Action Preferencs.

For anyone who has missed it, I highly recommend the website for Toward a Fair Michingan. Professor William Allen at the Michigan State University has sponsored and compiled a significantly insightful collection of print and video interviews discussing virtually ever dimension of racial preferences. Professor Carl Cohen of the University of Michigan is another one of the notable people augmenting the various points of view, pro and con. The dozen video interviews are well worth your time watching them. A very balanced treatment of the issues surrounding MCRI!

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, MCRI, has just Released a Second Radio Ad. Click HERE to listen to the 60 second broadcast.

Frederick Glaysher

“A Decision-Making Guide to the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative”. Almost. MCRI

The so-called “balanced” UM Decision-Making Guide to MCRI is as biased against it as anything could be, while pretending otherwise. It is clearly a piece of UM propaganda for continuing discrimination based on race, sex, and other arbitrary quailities. Here’s the key sentence:

“Finally, it is important to note that affirmative action programs only affect a small number of students and have almost no effect on the admissions probabilities of the tens of thousands of students who apply to competitive schools each year” (21).

“Almost.” The logic is sort of like a Nazi saying extermination programs “only affect a small number of” Europeans and have “almost no effect” on the life expectancy rates for most people…. Or maybe instead of incinerating nearly 6 million Jews, it would have been acceptable had Hilter only slaughtered, say, a million or 50,000, thereby increasing the odds for the vast majority of Jews?

Too many still? How about 5,000? Statistically would that not quailify as “almost no effect”? Given the German intellectual superiority and ability to decide who is fit to live and who isn’t (having attended superior European universities), what’s wrong with 5,000? Okay, how about 1,000?

What’s wrong with 100…. How about ONE? Why should we care about HIS or HER LIFE? Or whatever the “almost” acceptable number is for the administration and professoriate at my alma mater? HE or SHE can do something else….

What’s wrong with a little collateral damage, broken eggs, etc., given the laudatory goals of making ourselves (white people), feel better….

Stalin wasn’t sqeamish, why should UM admission officers or Mary Sue Coleman be? A Harvard or UM education makes it possible to make the right decisions, after all…. and assuage our misguided white guilt….

“Almost.”

Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI)
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, MCRI, has just started the “Yes on 2” Radio Campaign. Click HERE to listen to the 60 second broadcast that will soon be appearing on Michigan radio stations.

Frederick Glaysher

Affirmative action ban isn’t black and white. Detroit Free Press. September 5, 2006 BY DAWSON BELL.

In a Detroit Free Press article, Ward Connerly is quoted regarding the California 209 initiative, emphasizing again that the issues are more than statistics:

“Connerly said the measure of 209’s success is in the way individuals are treated.

“The vision should be, ‘Did you have a fair and equal chance to compete?’”

More important, he said, is that 209’s biggest impact was cultural.

“The weight of the law was no longer in favor of using preferences. That is an attitudinal change that may take decades to be absorbed. But it’s in the fabric of everyday life now.”

Frederick Glaysher

Civil Rights Initiative creator confident voters will pass it. Web-posted Aug 30, 2006. By KANIQUA S. DANIEL of The Oakland Press.

Ward Connerly is extensively quoted in The Oakland Press.  In brief, much of what Michigan needs to understand about the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI).

“First of all, I think people are forgetting one thing: I’m not on the ballot,” Connerly said. “This isn’t about me, it’s about a much bigger issue and that is affirmative action is nothing but a form of discrimination that is hindering minorities - and everyone else, for that matter - more than it is helping them.

“When I sat on the (University of California) Board of Regents, it became evident that the way they were going about accepting students in regards to race, was not only morally incorrect, but also not effective … With more than 40 years of affirmative action, the number of black students on college campuses is about the same as it was in 1978.”

“To the people who say this will cause unintended downfalls, that’s bull,” Connerly said. “The 1964 Civil Rights Act is virtually identical to the Michigan Civil Rights Act. Were there any unintended consequences there?

“One would have to be a fool to believe women would be hurt by this. These people are trying to frighten the public by using women as pawns. No matter what their strategy may be, I have no doubt that we will remain ahead.”

In regards to education, Connerly added: “As long as we can rely on affirmative action, we’ll never do anything about the real problems that inner city youths are facing. Something needs to be done about poor, low-income schools that don’t receive equal funding, but affirmative action is not the answer. Affirmative action isn’t doing a damn thing for poor black kids in Detroit.”

–

Frederick Glaysher

Some might be interested in knowing that Terrence J. Pell, president of the Center for Individual Rights, stated in The Detroit News yesterday,Wednesday, August 09, 2006, that CIR would represent Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) in federal court against Kwame Kilpatrick and BAMN’s desperate lawsuit.

“Let voters, not federal judges, decide state’s civil rights issue”:

“The largely frivolous federal voting rights lawsuit recently filed to keep the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative off the November ballot shows the lengths to which opponents will go to prevent Michigan citizens from an up or down vote on the use of racial preferences….”

See the full article

Frederick Glaysher 

MCRI - Michigan Civil Rights Initiative - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Do a Fascinating Show on the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative

Fred Glaysher has been a Hit on Over 220 Stations Nationwide

It’s one of today’s most explosive and compelling topics. Ask your listeners what they think of racial preferences and the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative and watch the calls come pouring in.

Fred Glaysher tells the truth about affirmative action and the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, what it means to Michigan and our nation. A fascinating, down-to-earth guest, Glaysher alerts your audience to why we need to end racial preferences in Michigan.

Expect many calls and even controversy as this former college instructor for over ten years and editor of the work of Robert Hayden, the most important African-American poet Michigan, as well as the country, has ever produced. Glaysher will help your audience understand the destructive way racial preferences actually work and why state-sponsored discrimination must end.

As a supporter of MCRI, Fred Glaysher was invited to hear Ward Connerly and Jennifer Gratz speak at the MCRI Conference, August 1, 2006, in Livonia, Michigan. Ask Glaysher all about what they had to say to their supporters in Michigan and what their strategy is for winning on November 7th. Fred Glaysher was also invited to speak about MCRI at the community forum at the Gerald R. Ford Museum on February 23, 2006, where he heard BAMN lawyer George Washington state what their strategy would be to defeat MCRI.

A veteran of over 230 interviews on the United Nations, here’s what hosts say about Glaysher:

“A powerful interview!” Margo LaGattuta, WPON, MI
“Very well done. I’d have him on again in a heartbeat.” Roy Justice, KXIC, IA
“Great interview!” Lynn Thompson, WALL, NY;
“Good show!” Dave Miller, KNOX, ND
“I got several calls immediately” Ken Behrens, WJBC, IL;
“A great guest!” Mike Todd, KXEL, IA.
“An informative and articulate guest. We received excellent feedback!” Jessie Frees, WMTR, NJ; NY; MD; OH; IN; KT; TN; MO; FL; MS; S/ND; MN; WI; NE; CO; AZ; WA; CA; syndicated 189; New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC, Atlanta, Detroit, St Louis, Denver, Louisville, Pittsburgh; Ontario; 230+ stations!

CREDENTIALS: Fred Glaysher is a writer, and editor of Robert Hayden’s Collected Prose (The University of Michigan Press) and Collected Poems–Hayden is widely considered the most important African-American poet Michigan, as well as the country, has ever produced. Among Glaysher’s books are Into the Ruins, 1999, and The Bower of Nil, 2002.

AVAILABILITY: For LIVE SHOWS ONLY. Will not appear on any forum with BAMN. Michigan, nationwide by arrangement and via telephone; available for last-minute interviews.

——MCRI - Michigan Civil Rights Initiative - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SAMPLE Interview Questions

What is the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI)?

What would this proposal affect?

Isn’t some consideration of race needed to balance disparities that exist?

Wouldn’t passage of this proposal mean the end of Affirmative Action?

Will this proposal have “unintended consequences”?

MYTHS:

MCRI “ends all affirmative action”

Women are helped by the prescence of racial preferences in college admissions

Scientific research into breast cancer or other gender-specific diseases may be affected

Women sports and domestic violence shelters may be eliminated

Breast cancer screening centers may be eliminated

Race preferences are needed because of the disparities in public schools

“Race is only one of many factors”

“If MCRI passes there will be drastic and devasting effects”

AVAILABILITY: For LIVE SHOWS ONLY. Will not appear on any forum with BAMN. Michigan, nationwide by arrangement and via telephone; available for last-minute interviews.

EMAIL CONTACT: Fred Glaysher, - Rochester Hills, Michigan 48306

SEE Glaysher’s MCRI Blog: Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/

Yesterday in an article in The Jackson Citizen-Patriot newspaper, titled “Leader of ballot effort brings message to Jackson,” Thursday, August 03, 2006, by Paul Overeiner, someone was cited as claiming young girls and women would be hurt by the passage of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, which is definitely not the case. As has become typcial of the treatment of the issue by the media, neither Ward Connerly nor anyone else was allowed to respond to the claim. It was merely presented as a statement of fact, as though it were true, with no other view permited. Ward Connerly and Jennifer Gratz have addressed the issue many times. In his letter to Governor Granholm on March 17, 2006, Connerly stated clearly that

“First, you claim that MCRI would “eliminate programs that are encouraging female and minority students to pursue “these (scientists and engineers) critical careers.” MCRI would do no such thing. It would prohibit you from giving them “preferential treatment.” It certainly would not prohibit you from “encouraging” them to pursue careers in these fields. Also, let me state the obvious: since you are currently able to grant preferential treatment based on gender, why aren’t there more women in these fields now? Could there be other factors that have nothing to do with the issue of “affirmative action?”

It is the strategy of BAMN and other race elites who benefit from the gravy train of racial preferences to scare women of voiting age into helping to defeat the initiative. Affirmative Action hasn’t worked for women as it is. They, like Jennifer Gratz, a woman, are always discriminated against when the choice is either a minority or a female. Far from hurting women, a level playing field would benefit them as it would all people.

Equality before the law is the best policy.

Frederick Glaysher 

I had the pleasure of being invited to hear Ward Connerly and Jennifer Gratz speak yesterday at a MCRI Conference in Livonia, Michigan. Both outlined the necessity of equality before the law for all people and the pervasive social problems that race preferences have created in Michigan and throughout the country.

I was impressed by their characters. Both strong people who understand how disruptive to the social fabric and racial harmony the injustices of preferential treatment have become. Connerly seemed to me a gentle, down-to-earth man, unassuming, insightful, and determined to change the stultifying system that now so many take for granted. If anyone thinks women are going backwards under the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, they haven’t heard Jennifer Gratz speak!

Frederick Glaysher

“I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by content of their character.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

How can we accept that these have become deeply ironic words? Can anyone read them and not feel how incongruous racial preferences have become? How contradictory? There has to be, and should be, but one standard for all people. Skin pigmentation is too trivial of a criterion. “Content of character” elevates the standard to one that all people must struggle and strive to achieve, long, laboriously, with perseverance, before internal and external barriers, shortcomings, and failures. “Content of character” places us all before the judgement of our fellow human beings, in the stormy struggle of existence, without leaning on stratagems for manipulation of the competition. King’s own children, have at times, many might say today, been found wanting before the standard set for them by their own father, and no more demanding standard could perhaps be set by any father.

We owe it to our children to expect something of them and not to look for shortcuts to success for them.

Frederick Glaysher

Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative

“A society as enormously powerful as America lacks the authority to ask its most brilliant, wealthy and superbly educated minority students to compete freely for college admission with poor whites who lack all these things. Just can’t do it.” -Shelby Steele

By definition, preferential treatment is not about equal treatment or competition; it’s about how political elites, in Michigan and elsewhere, acquire the votes of the masses, in particular the black masses, and thereby maintain control and power.

Frederick Glaysher

MCRI

www.fglaysher.com

“So their kids can’t go to college…” said George B. Washington, an affirmative action attorney with Scheff & Washington in Detroit.

Scare tactics and excessive rhetoric has been and remains the strategy of BAMN and other opponents of equal treatment under the law, regardless of race. Similarly, BAMN and others, aided by much of the media, misrepresent the impact of MCRI in terms of gender, attempting to scare and deceive white women into voting against the proposal. Both aspects of this strategy for defeating MCRI was articulated by Washington at the aforementioned meeting in Grand Rapids in February, 2006. As if, discrimination in favor of black kids with lower test scores than Asian-Americans, whites, or whoever, is the only alternative; as if, discrimination in favor of women is the only alternative.

California has demonstrated that its people are much better off without discrimination in favor of minorities and women. Michigan’s people need to move forward, not backwards under the yoke of BAMN and lawyers willing to indulge in any means necessary to scare and deceive voters into maintaining an injurious system of preferential treatment, injuring most the very kids who need to go to a college suitable to their abilities and actually GRADUATE….

Frederick Glaysher

www.fglaysher.com

“I think the questions that the MCRI has never answered is how do they get 125,000 black people to sign a petition so their kids can’t go to college and the answer is obvious,” said George B. Washington, an affirmative action attorney with Scheff & Washington in Detroit.

On February 23, 2006, at the Gerald R. Ford museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I heard George B. Washington set forth this strategy for discrediting and cancelling the signatures of 125,000 black people who signed the MCRI petition. The fact that he, BAMN, and other opponents of equal treatment cannot face is that 125,000 black people are sick and tired of preferential treatment and believe that they themselves, their children and families and fellow blacks are quite capable of competing with people of any racial origin or background.
Frederick Glaysher

www.fglaysher.com

“Young blacks became separatists because they were frightened by the need to compete.” -Ralph Ellison, 1973 interview.

The separatist impulse, of any stripe whatsoever, always has a ready source to draw upon, human insecurity. A few formidable intellectuals like Ellison realized long ago that the underlying dynamics of the radical fringe was headed in the wrong direction, woefully proven by the actual real-world result of affirmative action during the last forty years. The condecension of so many white liberals and others assisting, funding, supporting, justifying, and agitating for separatism, inside and out of the academy, as well as every walk of life throughout America today, not only in Michigan, shackles the minds of so many capable young black people, making it all the more difficult for the individual to break free.
Frederick Glaysher
www.fglaysher.com

“Al Sharpton quite explicitly rouses the rabble with the intent of scaring the white man into concessions: ‘Confrontation works,’ as he admitted….” -John McWhorter, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America (32-33).

It was in the Kresge Lounge at Oakland University in about 1996 that I heard political science Professor Vincent Khapoya admit that something like “keeping the pressure on” was a tactic, even though progress had been made. The implication seemed to be that for further progress to take place the “pressure” had to continue. As a first generation American of African ancestry, Professor Khapoya unintentionally revealed what perhaps few African-Americans would have–his consciousness of how calculated a technique it really was. As a person originally from outside the culture, he could see, like the quintessential outsider, what was really taking place. What fascinated me, though, at the time, sitting quietly in the back, nearly the only white person there for Black History Month or Martin Luther King Day, was he clearly seemed to have the sense that his admission was transgressing what was permitted to be said, a truth that should always be concealed in the world of race politics. He caught himself, looked nervously around at the audience, and the discussion moved on to topics more befitting the occasion.

Frederick Glaysher
www.fglaysher.com

“Now stigmatized as racists, whites can easily be extorted by blacks for countless concessions.” Shelby Steele, A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America (120).

BAMN’s tactics have been precisely those described so perceptively by Shelby Steele as stigmatization, threatening it, and exploiting the sense of guilt white liberals and others misguidedly feel. Such tactics are merely the vintage tactics of the race elite, what Steele scathingly calls the “grievance elite.” They are the tactics of school ground bullies, intimidating, name calling, and scaring the other kids into submission to their self-centered view of how things should be run. Nothing could be clearer than that they shouldn’t be allowed to control the playground. The grievance elite, of which BAMN is merely the most radical member at the moment, has long used the same tactics, in and out of education, much to the detriment of Michigan’s minority students and social order.

Frederick Glaysher
www.fglaysher.com

“Supporters of affirmative action are in a state of massive denial. The problem of black enrollment at elite universities is not the result of racist admissions policies. It is the result of poor black academic performance.” -David Horowitz, Hating Whitey (77)

Having taught English composition for ten years to freshman students in four different universities and community colleges, I had students from all backgrounds current in America, including young black people. They weren’t any worse or better, as a “group,” than other students. What counted was the individual’s abilities and determination to develop them. Study, hard work, and perseverance made for success and progress in the classroom, as it does for all students. Yet those students who were under the sway of affirmative action ideology, in my view and experience, were at a distinct disadvantage since they tended to blame others for their performance instead of redoubling their efforts and working harder. Many people have commented on this phenomenon of the ideology actually undercutting the ability of students to achieve. All the more reason, out of respect for their true potential, to end the crutch that is hobbling and stigmatizing too many students of real ability and undermining the integrity of the classroom.

Frederick Glaysher
www.fglaysher.com

It is reprehensible that the mainstream media, such as NPR and now the Chronicle of Higher Education, would spin their reporting to assist BAMN. Serious concern for race relations in America today ought to at least begin with the recognition that Ward Connerly, John McWhorter, and many other outstanding Americans, including more than 176,000 African-Americans in Michigan who signed the petition, are tired of the radical games and demeaning insults of affirmative action. The media should report the news, not suppress and distort it along politically correct lines that are woefully out of touch with reality.

Excerpted from The Chronicle of Higher Education 3-30-2006

michigan-court-allows-vote-on-anti-affirmative-action-measure

Frederick Glaysher

Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative

http://fglaysher.com/MCRI/

“In matters of race relations, the campus generates and exports hysteria, and it is the common sense of the ordinary man and woman in the street that must provide a corrective. The college campus is the last place one would now expect to have a rational discussion of affirmative action.” -John M. Ellis, Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities, 1997 (217)

The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative is based on the realization that only the now uncommon “common sense” of people in all walks of life, expressed through the ballot box, any longer matters. Little more than what John McWhorter has referred to as “black theatrics” is possible from Michigan’s campuses today. Something like BAMN and its tactics dominate much of the campus crowd. But the lived experience of all of Michigan’s citizens, of all their many diverse backgrounds, understands what affirmative action has become, and the many injustices perpetrated in the name of trying to rectify the past. The Governor, the media, the universities, having nearly joined forces with BAMN, cannot ultimately withstand nor prevent the voice of the people, no matter how much they attempt to control and manipulate the discussion about the ballot proposal.

Frederick Glaysher
www.fglaysher.com

“The intellectual catastrophe that has overtaken the humanities is not just a by-product of affirmative action. It *is* affirmative action transformed into a curricular and intellectual climate.” -John M. Ellis, Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities, 1997 (216)

Few people outside education can fully understand the extent to which affirmative action suffuses the curriculum at all levels, public school as well as the university. What John Ellis refers to as “the essential underpinnings of academic life–knowledge, argument, evidence, logic” are utterly banished before the dictates of affirmative action “justice.” The rare educator of sufficient intellectual depth and integrity to perceive the corruptions and duplicities wrought by affirmative action even more rarely dares to speak up for fear of losing one’s livelihood and career, and again at all levels of education, including public education, in Michigan, as elsewhere. In the name of tolerance, the most intolerant, coercive tyranny has long stalked the halls of academia.

Frederick Glaysher
www.fglaysher.com

Since the Michigan media can’t be relied on to report Ward Connerly’s response to the Governor’s misleading statements regarding MCRI, bloggers will have to present the facts for voters to decide for themselves:

–
March 17, 2006

The Honorable Jennifer M. Granholm
Office of Governor
State of Michigan
P.O. Box 30013
Lansing, MI 48909

Dear Governor Granholm:

In your March 9, 2005 Guest Column, “Affirmative action ban would hurt state’s future,” you took great liberties in making reference to me and my motives for supporting and promoting the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI). At the end of your piece, you extended an open invitation for readers to write to you. Because I saw no exception that would prohibit me from accepting that invitation, I am doing so accordingly.

At the outset, let me address my status as an “outsider.” Governor, I was born in Leesville, Louisiana, a fact which makes me an American citizen by birth. How is it that you, being Canadian by birth, have a greater entitlement to the privileges and benefits of American citizenship than I? Among those benefits and privileges is the right to have opinions and the right to express those opinions about matters – big and small – that affect all Americans. Michigan is not an island in some foreign country. It is one of the American states to which my tax dollars flow and where my passport of “civil rights” is presumed to be valid. If your defense of racial and gender preferences is on such solid ground, why is it necessary to hearken back to the days of Jim Crow segregationists who complained about those “outsiders” who asserted their right to urge our nation to fulfill the promise of equal treatment to all Americans, regardless of race, color, or national ancestry?

What is it about individuals such as you and Congressman John Dingell, who has also taken me to task for exercising my right as an American to express opposition to race preferences in Michigan, that causes you to be so intolerant and insecure about your convictions that you resort to such intellectual isolationism when it comes to an issue such as race? On the one hand, you talk boldly about the “global economy,” but then you retreat into your state’s rights cocoon when it comes to matters such as civil rights.

You assert that had I been from Michigan, I would know that “diversity is part and parcel in our economic strength.” Are you kidding? Or, are you simply attempting to distract the people of your state, for political reasons, by making me a bogey man? California is one of the most “diverse” places on the planet. The California economy is vibrant and booming. And, I hasten to add, California is a state that has outlawed preferential treatment on the basis of race, gender and ethnicity. Michigan, on the other hand, is regarded by many as one of the preference capitals of the nation. How is your economy? How many jobs are you losing day-by-day? To what “economic strength” are you making reference? Are you really expecting your residents to believe that by ending preferential treatment on the basis of race, gender and ethnicity, your state’s economy will worsen even more? If so, such an assertion defies logic.

It is amusing that you call the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative “deceptively named.” Have you ever read the 1964 Civil Rights Act? Do you consider the principle of equal treatment “without regard to race, color or ethnicity,” contained in that Act, to be such a deception that the Congress erred in naming it the “Civil Rights Act?” Has it escaped your attention that the principle contained in MCRI is identical to that contained in the 1964 Civil Rights Act?

Your column, which seems to attempt to summon the better nature of your electorate by appealing to the importance of “diversity,” is inconsistent in one major respect. You say that if I knew your people better I would understand that you appreciate the value of “teamwork and unity.” You point to the great pride that the people of Michigan can take in their “steady advance of freedom and equality.” All of this is true. Why, then, do you presume that these same good people are closet bigots who are just waiting for the opportunity to discriminate against women and “minorities?” Why do you lack confidence in their capacity to treat others the way they wish to be treated – with fairness and dignity?

If you oppose “quotas,” as you say you do, how can you support their functional equivalent and the method by which quotas are obtained – “preferential treatment?” Like so many others who express their opposition to “quotas,” your opposition rings hollow when you seek to have it both ways: oppose quotas but support preferential treatment of women and others based on skin color and ethnic background.

I was born in the Deep South, at a time when racial discrimination was rampant. I know first-hand the meaning of the term “racial discrimination.” I doubt that you can say the same. Your knowledge about discrimination was probably gleaned from history books. In days of my youth, as a brown-skinned man, I rarely heard the term, “diversity.” But, I sure as hell heard and experienced “discrimination.” And, I can tell you that the pursuit of diversity should never be an excuse for our government to sanction or practice discrimination based on an individual’s race, color, gender, ethnicity or national ancestry. That principle should be guaranteed to Jennifer Gratz, a white woman, equally as it is guaranteed to me, a black man. One should not have to be an “outsider from California” to convince you of the importance of the fundamental principle of equal treatment before the law without regard to the color of a person’s skin. This principle is deeply etched in the character of most Americans. Had you been born in America, perhaps you would have a better appreciation of this fact.

Finally, let me address two astounding claims that you make about the effects of MCRI. First, you claim that MCRI would “eliminate programs that are encouraging female and minority students to pursue “these (scientists and engineers) critical careers.” MCRI would do no such thing. It would prohibit you from giving them “preferential treatment.” It certainly would not prohibit you from “encouraging” them to pursue careers in these fields. Also, let me state the obvious: since you are currently able to grant preferential treatment based on gender, why aren’t there more women in these fields now? Could there be other factors that have nothing to do with the issue of “affirmative action?”

Have you noticed that at elite institutions of higher education, such as Harvard, UC Berkeley, the University of Michigan and others, where race and gender preferences are taken most seriously, the number of “affirmative action” beneficiaries who graduate with degrees in science and engineering is no greater than at other institutions? It is not rocket science to realize that this phenomenon has nothing to do with the ability to promote “diversity.” This argument is a fig leaf for other objectives. If women can be governors and among the highest paid university presidents in the land, without any “preferential treatment,” why should we believe they need “affirmative action” to become scientists or engineers?

Second, you acknowledge the need to “eliminate the achievement gap in education in Michigan,” but you claim that MCRI “would end programs that help minority students achieve the high standards we are setting in our schools.”

Governor, this would be laughable were it not so tragic. It is clear that you have little knowledge about what accounts for this achievement gap. Moreover, if this gap exists in a paradigm that promotes preferential treatment, but is widening instead of closing, pray tell how the elimination of preferences will worsen the situation. Frankly, as a “minority,” I consider it demeaning and insulting that you believe “minority” students can only meet high standards by the benefice of preferential treatment. Had you lived through the period of my youth and been subjected to the conditions of racial oppression, as I was, you would know about the strength of spirit of black people and their ability to achieve without preferences, as long as they were not held back by discrimination based on the color of their skin.

If you seriously want to help “minority students” – and I certainly believe you do – then you will lead the way in giving them greater freedom to attend a school of their choice. You will lead the effort to eliminate “legacy” admissions so that all students will have an equal chance, regardless of whether their ancestors attended the university or not. You will make it possible for the daughter of a union worker, whose parents did not attend UM, to have the same chance as the son of a big automaker executive, whose dad had the privilege of graduating from UM and who donates large sums to preserve a preference for his children and grandchildren. You would lend your support to the growing national movement in favor of socioeconomic “affirmative action” instead of race-based “affirmative action.” Help those who need it, not those who happened to be born with the right color of the day.

Should you care to further this discussion and to become enlightened about the facts of this controversy instead of relying on the sound-bites of those aligned with you, I am at your service. Certainly, even an “outside activist from California,” whose tax dollars end up in the coffers of Michigan, might have something to offer on a subject that seems to be of such interest to you.
Sincerely,

Ward Connerly

“…change the culture of the university, which is what I was (and am still) seeking as much as anything else.” -Ward Connerly (139)

The discimination and preferences hidden behind the pieties of affirmative action have poisoned and corrupted the culture of the university, filtering down through all levels of education, in Michigan and elsewhere throughout the nation. “As much as anything else,” as much as anywhere else, university education has been distorted and vitiated at times by the social engineering and sanctimonious designs of academic administrators and educators. If Michigan is to find a way for its people to go forward together, the removal of legalized racial preferences in university and public education is crucial for the state to have any chance of surmounting its present difficulties.

Frederick Glaysher
www.fglaysher.com

“Clearly, affirmative action has hardened into an ideology in search of a justification.” -Ward Connerly, Creating Equal (22).

Sitting on the stage with BAMN lawyer George Washington and the other participants in the February 23, 2006 forum at the Gerald Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, the truth of Ward Connerly’s observation hit me like a ton of bricks. The questions and comments from the audience were predominantly all stereotypes and cliches. It was as though they could only perceive me as a man with white pigmentation, not a human being; the ideology of affirmative action precluded any other possibility, any engagement with complexity. No matter how I tried to resist it, they needed me in that role, a role I had clearly been invited to fulfill.

Frederick Glaysher
www.fglaysher.com

“Discriminatory admissions . . . are wrong because they are a manifest violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which unambiguously forbids institutions receiving federal financial assistance from discriminating on the basis of race or color or nationality, which we [U. Michigan] admit that we do.” - Carl Cohen

I was shocked in 2000, when my son applied to the University of Michigan, to discover that my alma mater was allocating an additional 20 points to minority applicants in competition with him, merely on the basis of their pigmentation, not on the basis of their own study, sacrifice, perseverance, and determination to acquire the abilities and skills requisite for academic success. I became all the more aware of the injustices and double standards used by my alma mater when one of his fellow students, a widely recognized mediocre student, with a score on the SAT more than several points lower than my son’s, was easily admitted to U of M, much to the derision of other students at the International Academy in Bloomfield Hills.

However my alma mater may wish to spin the Supreme Court’s decisions regarding its admission policies, the inescapable judgement is that U of M discriminated, for many years, in favor of minority students.

Frederick Glaysher
www.fglaysher.com

“These preferences are also wrong because they violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to our Constitution.” - Carl Cohen

How easily we’ve slid down the slippery slope of the end justifies the means, for decades now, till the worst of the oppressed become the oppressors, in the classic form of human experience. The objective is not, as BAMN would inflame it, to *resegregate*, but to find together a way to go forward, black and white, and everybody else, equally under the law, equally under the burdens and vicissitudes of life in this world.

Monday, March 13th, 2006

Monday, March 13th, 2006
Why I Collected Signatures for the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative

Frederick Glaysher

Two reasons among many:

1. Murray State University, October 1994 - Filed with EEOC, KY

2. Reverse racism at Lewis & Clark Community College, Godfrey, Illinois

………

EEOC, St. Louis, Missouri - Filed with EEOC, MO
Center for Individual Rights - Feldacker & Cohen

—– Original Message —–
From: Azizi Jasper
To: earthrisepress
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 1:09 PM
Subject: MCRI Debate in Grand Rapids MI
Greetings,

On February 23, 2006; I Azizi Jasper and Jonathan Jelks have organized a non-partisan community forum at the Gerald R. Ford museum to discuss the Michigan Civil Rights ballot proposal. This very controversial initiative has been the topic of numerous discussions, and it is our goal to foster a productive, non-partisan debate that will perpetuate awareness as well as thought-provoking ideas about the issue.

We are inviting editors from six local news publications to ask six to ten questions regarding the issue of affirmative action. There will be two groups of panelists representing the competing interests that the initiative raises. We would love for your group to represent the pro-MCRI standpoint. The panel will be moderated by Grand Rapids attorney Mr. Martin T. Shepard esq. There will also be brief opportunity for question and answer from the public.

The format of the debate/panel is as follows.

Moderator (Martin T. Shepard esq.)
Questions will be asked by editors and/or representatives of six local papers, GR Times, GR Press, GVSU Laker, Calvin College Chimes, and Aquinas Saint among others.
The anti MCRI group so-far includes, President of U of M NAACP Riana Anderson, Brandon Jessup, Attn George Washington among others…

The event is scheduled from 7:00pm to 9:00pm on Feb 23, 2006.

To confirm, please promptly contact Jonathan Jelks by email at @calvin.edu or by phone at (616)

Or Azizi Jasper by e-mail at @yahoo.com or via phone at (616)

Sincerely,

Azizi Jasper & Jonathan Jelks