A Michigan-sized Mistake

There are some voters in California who remember voting for Proposition 13. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Property taxes were soaring and Prop 13 promised to bring necessary relief. It passed in 1978, but its real effects were not felt for several years to come. As property tax revenue shrank, California's state budget suffered. Former Governor Gray Davis can blame at least a part of his recall from the state's top office a few years ago as an after-effect of Prop 13. It seemed like such a good idea at the time.

In a few months, or maybe years, the voters in Michigan will realize what a gigantic goof they made when the approved Prop 2, the state anti-affirmative action constitutional amendment which may become effective as soon as mid-December.

In short, the proposition voids the use of affirmative action (by race, gender, color, ethnicity, national origin) in employment, education, and public contracting. The wording seems innocuous enough, and the second part of the proposal states that discrimination is also illegal too.

And to think it all started because little Jennifer Gratz and young Patrick Hamacher didn't get admitted to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Of course, they both could pinpoint their failure to get in to two minority students who did.

The university admissions process at any school is a maze which only a few students out of the many that apply are lucky enough to navigate. There are some shortcuts: if you're a Heisman-quality football player applying to a football school, if you're the re-incarnation of Wilt Chamberlain at a basketball powerhouse, if you are smarter than Steven Hawkings you'll probably get in, and if, as the song says, your daddy's rich and your momma's good looking, you'll probably get special consideration -- not for your brains, but daddy's dollars. The rest of us slog through the maze.

Although Gratz and Hamacher were both waitlisted for admittance to UofM, each chose to attend other schools in the state system. Gratz and Hamacher are the basis for the last round of lawsuits that eventually ended up at the Supreme Court (Gratz v. Bollinger). In a 6-3 decision, Gratz and Hamacher kinda won. I say "kinda" because the Supremes sent the case back to District Court where that court could amend the UofM procedure for undergraduate admissions. (There is much more to this story than can comfortably be told here.)

Gratz apparently wasn't satisfied with that result and elected to mind-meld with black super-conservative Ward Connerly. (Connerly, who is black, hates black folk.) Together they cooked up a scheme to amend Michigan's constitution to outlaw affirmative action. Not just pass a law, but amend the constitution.

This past November, Michigan voters voted to do just that.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time. I'm still studying all the ramifications of this law -- which affects not only public education, but public contracting and employment. It will apparently affect young girls and women, by making Title IX unconstitutional. So if Jennifer played a sport and wanted to do so in college under the provisions of Title IX: tough noogies, it's
unconstitutional. Title IX provided money to girl's sports that were unfunded or underfunded in public schools and colleges, and made adjustments to men's sports to accommodate the women's inclusion.

If Jennifer wanted to start a woman-owned business and seek state contracts, she might have been able to use the provisions of set-asides to insure that she could compete with larger male-owned business to secure state government contracts. Not any more. It's unconstitutional.

And if Jenny was searching for a job in Michigan, she once enjoyed the protections of the state's laws which made discrimination illegal, but more importantly, guaranteed that she had to be considered equally with her male counterparts. Now her resume can be "86-ed" right alongside, Tamika's and Schlomo's and Red Cloud's, and Tran's and Mohammed's and Sanjay's.

Yet it seemed like such a good idea at the time. Thanks, Jennifer.