On Tuesday, the Grand Rapids Bar Association hosted a forum on the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), a ballot initiative that proposes to ban affirmative action programs in the state of Michigan. The panel featured two notable proponents of the initiative—Ward Connerly, the California businessman who is funding the effort to eliminate affirmative action in Michigan as he did with California’s Proposition 209, and Jennifer Gratz, current Executive Director of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) and the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit that successfully struck down the University of Michigan’s point system for undergraduate admissions. Sister Monica Kostielney of the Michigan Catholic Conference and Bruce Courtade, the head of the Grand Rapids Bar Association, represented the opposing view. During the wide-ranging discussion, the panel debated the use of race in university admissions, strategies to confront the ongoing racism in society, the record of Ward Connerly’s Proposition 209 in California, and the ways in which society benefits from diversity.
In his opening remarks, California businessman and former University of California Regent Ward Connerly described how the United States has long struggled with the issue of race and shared his view that as one who grew up in the deep south, he understands that “racial oppression is one of most humiliating, dehumanizing things that can happen to a person.” From this basis, Connerly described how the United States made the collective decision in the 1960s to work towards a “colorblind” society and that the 1964 Civil Rights Act says that people will not be judged with regard to race. For Connerly, the 1964 Civil Rights Act provides a basis on which affirmative action programs that look at race are illegal and discriminate against people on the virtue of race. Connerly argued that Michigan “cannot build a civil order classifying your people and treating them differently based on those attributes in the 1964 Civil Rights Act.” To this end, Connerly stated that the MCRI is designed to further compliance with the Civil Rights Act and eliminate discrimination based on race, sex, ethnicity, and country of origin.
Jennifer Gratz, Executive Director of the MCRI, made similar arguments when explaining that the Initiative’s supporters “want to get to place where race isn’t a factor in decision making” both in everyday life and in government and corporate policy. She argued that there is a contradiction in the way in which state institutions teach people to ignore race and overcome racism yet, in her opinion, the state government treats people differently based on race each day through bad affirmative action policies that have “invaded all aspects of our lives.” Gratz stated that race is a factor for school admissions at the elementary level through the graduate level and that combined with racial preferences to gain employment and government contracts, she believes that there is currently no place where “the playing field is even.” For Gratz, the MCRI is an opportunity to get the state “back on track” and eliminate race as a factor in school admissions, employment, and government contracting. She also responded to opponents who have argued that the MCRI will ban all affirmative action programs and pointed out that the MCRI allows job openings to continue to be promoted to as wide an audience as possible and will allow efforts to keep testing from being biased towards one group or another.
Sister Monica Kostielney’s opening remarks argued that the MCRI raises the question of race and gender relations in society and described how racism is still “alive and well” in Michigan. Kostielney explained that affirmative action was developed to help people of color achieve in an unwelcoming environment and argued that in her view, affirmative action is the best way to move forward against racism. She described how not everyone in society begins at the same point due to the history of racism in the United States and that as a result, affirmative action is a means of addressing the affects of current and past racism and that society has a responsibility to overcome past injustices. The discussion was also expanded beyond race by Kostielney, who pointed out that affirmative action programs allow for outreach to underrepresented people in a variety of fields such as men in nursing or women in math and science careers and that it has been instrumental in closing the gender gap. However, Kostielney observed that there was much work to be done as women have many high profile positions in Michigan such as the Governorship, yet remain disproportionately represented and continue to earn sixty-seven cents per dollar that men earn. Kostielney also opposed the MCRI on technical grounds, stating that the state constitution is not the appropriate place to address admissions and hiring practices.
Opening remarks by Bruce Courtade, chair of the Grand Rapids Bar Association, reflected how broad the opposition is to the MCRI. Courtade is what he described as someone who would be expected to support the MCRI—a white, male, conservative Republican living in Kent County—yet he is “adamantly opposed to the Initiative.” Courtade described how he grew up in the very white Dearborn Heights and that he benefited in college at University of Michigan from the school’s diversity and that his experiences there made him aware of the need for diversity in Grand Rapids’ Bar Association. Courtade explained that the Bar’s efforts to recruit attorneys of color have been largely unsuccessful and that facing that reality, state affirmative action programs to recruit such attorneys are desperately needed. Ideally, Courtade would like to see a society where race is not a factor, but he said that day has yet to arrive and that consequently, the MCRI would be a step back that “drives a wedge and will harm future generations.”
Following opening remarks, the panel was opened up to questions from the moderator and the audience, with questions touching on a variety of issues related to racism and discrimination in Michigan. During the question and answer period, Ward Connerly stated that affirmative action has failed to eradicate racism and that while opponents of the MCRI say that they would like to see a society where race is not a factor, they fail to realize that there is a simple solution to the problem. Connerly argued that “if you want to get beyond race… you just stop talking about it, you stop practicing it, you start treating people as individuals” and explained that he found this principle to be easy to apply in his own life as he treats people on the basis of equality. Connerly brought up this argument when he reiterated near the end of the forum that “race must be purged from the body politick” and that the solution to racism and sexism is to simply treat other people how you want to be treated. Similarly, Connerly stated that “frequently the term diversity is mindless blather” and it is a “code word” that is thrown around, an argument that was also picked up by Jennifer Gratz who argued that “diversity is a code word” that refers to the functional equivalent of a quota where percentages are used to preference people instead of judging them on an individual basis. Connerly’s “one-on-one” approach to solving racism certainly was a poor substitute from the affirmative action programs that he argued have failed to overcome racism in the state.
There was also debate over the banning affirmative action in California via Connerly’s Proposition 209. Connerly was the first to bring this legacy up, stating that there were “more students overall in the University of California system now without preferences” than before Proposition 209. Bruce Courtade challenged Connerly on this statement and charged that the proponents of the MCRI are looking at the remedy—affirmative action—as the problem when the problem is the “racism that is everywhere in the state of Michigan” and that racism remains unaddressed. While Courtade argued that the results of banning affirmative action would be somewhat different in Michigan due to it being a different state, he said that you could learn from California that at elite institutions minority representation has plummeted. He cited recent statistics at UCLA that show that of 4,852 freshmen only 96 (2%) are African Americans, and of those, 20 are recruited athletes. Connerly acknowledged that minority representation will go down if Michigan colleges are granting preferences based on race, but argued that this has more to do with the “huge problem” with the academic performance of African Americans. Connerly told his fellow African-Americans that they need to “start doing heavy lifting that you are going to have to do at some point” and to start working harder as the “crutch” of affirmative action will be eliminated sooner or later by the Supreme Court—if not by the MCRI—and that it is time for “black students… to get yourselves better prepared.” He cited Bill Cosby and expressed strong support for Cosby’s remedy of “personal responsibility” in the African American community. Similarly, Courtade explained how before Proposition 209 when outreach for women in construction industry, concrete gains by women increased their numbers in construction jobs, but Proposition 209 flat-lined increases.
Predictably, Jennifer Gratz focused many of her comments on the University of Michigan’s admission process, despite the fact that the school has already altered its admissions procedures in response to the Supreme Court ruling in her case. While Gratz talked extensively about a grid system where two grids existed for determining which applicants would get in to the university, Bruce Courtade pointed out that the University of Michigan eliminated that system before Gratz’s lawsuit and stopped the point system after it was struck down by the Supreme Court. Of course, Gratz also failed to address other factors in admissions such as family name, history, athletic skill, and reputation of high school and argued that candidates need to be judged on an individual basis and not give any preferences based on race. She also did not mention that no unqualified candidates were admitted to the school. Whereas Gratz argued that “diversity is a good goal” but that the University of Michigan’s admission standards trumped equal treatment under the law, it was also pointed out that in Michigan where low skill, high wage jobs are no longer available, education is a crucial factor and that the so-called “level playing field” sought by MCRI proponents can only exist once everyone has an equal education. Courdate also stated that he believed that “we are condemning the next generation of black students” if they are systemically denied admission to Michigan universities once affirmative action programs are eliminated.
