4 - Tuesday, November 7, 2006 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Ie diidigan aUj to.Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890 4 413 E. Huron St. Ann Arbor, MI 48104 tothedaily@michigandaily.com EMILY BEAM DONN M. FRESARD CHRISTOPHER ZBROZEK JEFFREY BLOOMER EDITOR IN CHIEF EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS MANAGING EDITOR Unsigned editorials reflect the official position oftthe Daily's editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations representsolely the views of their authors. Stop Proposal 2 MCRI is bad for entire state University President Mary Sue Coleman will probably be tuned in to the state and national election results tonight, but what she and many others at the Univer- sity will have most in mind is what voters decide on Proposal 2. This is an important election year at both the national and state level, but no issue on the ballot will have a greater effect on the University than Proposal 2. They can't run anything right." - Former President BILL CLINTON, referring to Re- publicans and their poor management of the war Let the curtain fall where it may in Iraq, at a Democrat campaign stop in Rochester, N.Y., as reported yesterday by CNN.com. The conspiracy of arrogance With Jennifer Gratz at the lead, pro- ponents of the Michigan Civil Rights Ini- tiative have attempted to turn Proposal 2 into a referendum on the University's admissions policy. There is little doubt that should the proposal pass, the Uni- versity would be forced to stop using race and ethnicity in its admissions decisions as soon as this year. A diverse student body at the University benefits students here and communities across the state, and the most reasonable way to achieve that diversity is through the University's current admissions policy. The University may not be able to fix the drastic inequalities in education that make college unattainable for many underprivileged students, while it is often the expectation for their wealthier peers. But what it can do is allow qualified stu- dents who didn't attend schools that offered 12 advanced placement courses and didn't come from four generations of University graduates to have a shot at attending the University. Even so, a good number of Michigan residents are uncomfortable with the University's admissions policy. But that is not reason enough to support Propos- al 2. The impact of Proposal 2 would be broad. On campus, the University's Sum- mer Bridge and Women in Science and Engineering programs would be affect- ed. Beyond State Street, it would inter- fere with programs to interest junior high school girls in science and prohibit efforts to include minorities and women in public contracting, to namea few areas it would impact. Those effects are certain. And given the vague language of the ballot, what's also certain is that, like in California, public institutions would be mired in lawsuits as the people and the court system sort out what "preferential treatment" actu- ally means in legal terms. In short, Proposal 2 is a bad idea. That's why both gubernatorial candidates and prominent members of both major politi- cal parties oppose it. That's why it's one issue on which the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Michi- gan AFL-CIO agree. Affirmative action alone cannot undo the legacy of inequality gener- ated by centuries of racism and gender discrimination. But without it, society will be less, not more; equal. If Proposal 2 passes, it may settle the discussion of whether affirmative action has a place in our state - but it will also provide a convenient excuse to overlook issues of racial and gender inequality that remain. Michigan cannot make the same mis- take California and Washington did. Vote NO on Proposal 2. History's greatest evils are com- mitted by individuals convinced that they can do only good. If the last five years have taught us any- , thing, it's that the "stay the course" dogmatism of the n Bush Administra- tion is not merely an intellectual incapac- ity but a moral fail- ure. By refusing to TOBY seriously consider MITCHELL the mistakes it has made, our govern- ment has only made them more costly, and it has done so because our leaders are too blinded by ego and ideology to admit they've failed in any way. Journalist Ron Suskind wrote prior to the 2004 elections about a conversation he had with a senior adviser to President Bush. The adviser said that men like Sus- kind were "in what we call the reality- based community," which he defined as the people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of dis- cernible reality." When Suskind agreed, the aide cut him off: "That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're study- ing that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new real- ities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." Given the attitude of our leaders, who can be surprised that conspiracy theo- ries have gone mainstream? Forty-two percent of Americans said the adminis- tration engineered the recent drop in gas prices with the elections in mind, and more than a third of the American pub- lic suspects that federal officials assisted in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East. Not since the Nixon years has the paranoid fantasy that our country is run by a secretive cabal of impossibly amoral Machiavellian supervillians come closer to reality. According to the leaked Down- ing Street memo, "intelligence and facts were being fixed around (Iraq) policy" at least seven months before the war. The administration illegally spied on Ameri- can citizens, and it now has the power to detain just about anyone anywhere in the world, subject them to classified "alternative interrogation methods" and hold them indefinitely without the ability to challenge their imprisonment. When a detainee at a secret CIA torture camp tried to discuss his treatment at trial, the Bush Administration told the judge that he should be silenced for the sake of national security. This administration is that arrogant. They are the country; their job security is national security. Despite the tempta- tion to believe the Internet conspiracy theory that Dick Cheney is merely the human form of a 12-foot-tall blood-drink- ing, child-sacrificing reptile alien bent on world domination - there is a certain psychological resemblance - this gov- ernment's abuses of power are simply the effect of personal ego blown up to cosmic proportions. As Cheney himself illustrat- ed, sometimes these supervillians are just good ol' boys who can't differentiate their friend's face from a quail. The problem with believing you create reality is that reality has a way of prov- ing you wrong. If "history's actors" were really so powerful, would we have heard about the Mark Foley scandal, where a known child predator was kept in charge of the Caucus on. Missing and Exploited Children? Or of Jim Guckert, a.k.a. Jeff Gannon, the fake reporter who asked the president flattering questions until it was discovered that he was literally a male prostitute who had somehow ended up with access to the White House press briefing? Would Iraqbe where it is now if they were really in control? This delusional arrogance doesn't mean our current government isn't a real threat to our liberty. When the administration claims that opposing its policies is tantamount to supporting terrorism and then passes laws allow- ing indefinite imprisonment for sup- porting terrorists, alarm bells ought to go off. When conservative activ- ists' death threats to "liberal activist" judges prompt former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor to com- pare the intimidation of an independent judiciary to the early stages of dictator- ship, maybe we ought to pause. When bigoted Christian fundamentalists hot for Armageddon get involved in Middle East foreign policy, it's time for America to wake up and smell the plutonium. On Election Day today, voters have a chance to show who the real power is in this country. Telling ourselves "Why bother, the system's rigged anyways" or "There's no real choice, they're all cor- rupt" is not only false, it's implicitly con- servative; these attitudes support the current government in all its arrogance and incompetence. If we want to change the system, now is our chance. But if we don't act, we ought to consider that if things keep going this way, maybe next time there really won't be a choice. Toby Mitchell can be reached at tojami@umich.edu. VOTE TODAY! Make your grandparents proud. Stand up for democracy. Prove to legislators that "kids today" are good for something. Get a sticker. Earn your right to complain about your government. Besides, everyone knows that if you don't vote, the terrorists win. THE CANDIDATES CHARLES FAIRBANKS EP We cannot be colorblind Dick DeVos's lack of political experience and hard-right social views make Gov. Jennifer Granholm the better option for Michigan's governor, despite her lackluster four years in office. The Daily endorses JENNIFER GRANHOLM for governor. Republican candidate Michael Boucha- rd's has done a good job as Oakland County sheriff, but his campaign has focused almost exclusively on security. U.S. Senator DEBBIE STABENOW has the right combination of vision and experience needed to represent Michi- gan in the U.S. Senate. Rep. John Dingell, who has been in Congress for more than 50 years, is cur- rently the body's longest-serving mem- ber - and for good reason. At 80, the U.S. representative is still going strong; re-elect JOHN DINGELL. Of the nine candidates for the Univer- sity Board of Regents, two stand out. Vote JULIA DONOVAN DARLOW and KATHY WHITE for regent. . The Democratic incumbent for the 18th District state Senate has concrete plans for voting reform and draws on a decade spent in a state Legislature that is short on experienced members thanks to term limits. Vote LIZ BRATER for state senator. As one of Ann Arbor's most informed and progressive activists, as well as a willing representative of students, REBEKAH WARREN is the Daily's choice for state representative for the 53rd District. Ann Arbor cannot hope for someone who represents its ideals much more passion- ately than Mayor JOHN HIEFTJE. For that and his innovative proposals for the city, such as mass transit plans, the Daily .supports him for re-election. As if the alliterative appeal of "Coun- cilman Kunselman" weren't enough, STEPHEN KUNSELMAN is also the most qualified candidate for Ann Arbor City Council from the 3rd Ward; the Daily supports him for City Council. The array of opinions in the Daily sur- rounding Proposal 2 is impressive, but what the rhetoric framing this ballot ini- tiative misses is the historical construc- tion of whiteness and its privileges. Most University students, including myself, grew up ina country where laws explicitly discriminating against people of color have been eradicated. Despite the highly publicized Civil Rights-era desegregation of schools, most of us still grew up in predominantly white communities. In these communities, our impressions of nonwhite Americans are largely shaped by the media, often in the form of political assessments of urban "structural and social problems." There is also the occasional portrayal of individuals who embody the Ameri- can "rags to riches" myth - stories that tell us racial disparities in health and wealth are not our fault and can be overcome by an individual's hard work and persistence. For these reasons, most whites - 70 percent in a recent poll - now believe that blacks have the same opportunities as them, and many white students feel victimized by programs that reduce their chances of admission, however margin- ally. These students insist that despite whatever atrocities occurred in the past, they are individually innocent of oppress- ing minority groups, and that efforts to collectivelycompensate thesegroupsnow impinge upon their freedom to achieve as individuals. By framing affirmative action in terms that claim tobe colorblind in the name of equality, supporters of Proposal 2 suggest that minority groups are the root cause of inequality: Whiteness is now incidental with privilege only because many suc- MCRI supporters exploitfearfor votes cessful individuals happen to be white. This logic is preposterous and histori- cally obtuse. The displacement and slaughter of Native Americans and institutionalized slaverywerethemostsignificantmeansof building assets and privileges for whites at the expense of other races, but the abatement of such practices did not put an end to white privilege. For decades after abolition, legal and illegal stipulations thwarted nonwhites from accumulating property or achieving social mobility; by the time blacks might have been allowed to stake claims, the federal government had finished handing out land. In the 20th century, the Federal Housing Administration financed loans to make homeownership a reality for millions of Americans, but its overtly racist policies systematically favored white home buyers moving to segre- gated suburbs while denying loans to blacks and others in inner-city or racial- ly mixed neighborhoods. Meanwhile, "slum-clearance" and "urban renewal" projects demolished urban neighbor- hoods across the country, often with the intention of building more housing for poor people, but usually resulting in little housing replacement. The legacy of segregation laws and racist practices still hurts black families today. To be sure, American deindustri- alization and the exodus of factory work affects all working-class people, but the architecture of de facto segregation and the continued reality of discrimination makes the effects of job loss more acute on black families. This is largely because the losses of factories and good urban jobs are accompanied by conservative attacks on government support of public housing, health insurance, education and public transportation. As George Lipsitz writes, this "dis- investment in U.S. cities, factories and schools since the 1970s disguises as racial problems the general social problems posed by deindustrialization, econom- ic restructuring, and neoconservative attacks on the welfare state and the social wage." In turn, this disguise "attributes the economic advantages enjoyed by whites to their family values, faith, and foresight - rather than to the favorit- ism they enjoy through their possessive investment in whiteness." Of course, this is not to say that all whites enjoy these privileges equally, nor am I saying that affirmative action is without negative repercussions. But colorblindness by law does not make up for hundreds of years of systemic, legally inscribed socioeconomic racial discrimi- nation, especiallywhenunderthe reignof a federal government trying to eviscerate social services and pass privilege freely to the next-of-kin (e.g., President Bush's attack on the estate tax). Race is a culturally constructed category, but that does not make the effects of its social and material deploy- ment any less real. I fervently hope that voters reject Proposal 2, but whatever happens, one thing is clear: We need to critically understand our nation's past to build justice into the systems it gave us. Feigning colorblindness not only prevents us from understanding other people - it also blinds us to the contem- porary relevance of the biggest scars in American history. Charles Fairbanks is a graduate student in the School of Art and Design. 4 4 THE ISSUES Vote YES on PROPOSAL 1 to make sure state park user fees stay where they belong. The so-called Michigan Civil Rights Initiative would do much more to deny opportunities and spawn lawsuits than it would do to promote the "equality" its backers say it would bring. Vote NO on PROPOSAL 2. No matter how much you hate doves, there's no need to shoot them. And remind your hunting friends that no one is trying to take away their guns. Vote NO on PROPOSAL 3. We're not a fan of sneaky City Council members taking your land to build a strip mall, but the Michigan Supreme Court already ruled to prevent that in 2004. Vote NO on PROPOSAL 4. Proposal 5 might be flawed as a piece of public policy, but securing education funding is better than the prospect of another few years of cuts. Vote YES on PROPOSAL5. SEND LETTERS TO: TOTHEDAILY@MICHIGANDAILY.COM that Granholm has so carefully cultivat- ed. Don't let anxiety stand in the way of a progress for Michigan. Voting no on Proposal 2 ensures a better future for Visit www.michigandaily.com for the full text of the Daily's endorsements. ERIN RUSSELL rHIS15FOXACr1ON TON PASAYSTHAT HEW TATM 15 TNC01A16 58 18118 1$ ONO $0 Pp0 G TOOAYs 16?OP06AI.- 91&0601CAl.OP Trwo esafCN ON rHE VOW;NG BAu.OT, aC NtiFIG pgASO Fo 8100rs 8581558TBt6 Of MOiLfI'1 covea t+ ( t - c TO THE DAILY: all of us. Exploiting fear for a vote: Is it easy? Yes. But is it right? No. Despite the taste- Dana Cronyn less nature of these tactics, the Michigan LSAfreshman Civil Rights Initiative has continued to manipulate its supporters, branding fear and anxiety into the heart of its base. It Kerry ml is important, however, to look past the euphemistic labeling of Proposal 2 and the way y realize minorities (be they women, the disabled or blacks) aren't looking for an TO THE DAIL' advantage; they're looking for an oppor- Jesse Jackso tunity. No one is asking for handout to hear speak - just the same chances automatically day, used Sen. bestowed upon white males. "botched joke" Regardless of which political party outrage among: you support, this is a nonpartisan issue. and Proposal 2 Both Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Dick Jackson sug DeVos oppose the measure - and for ly used a singl good reason. Proposal 2 is a backward not a lack of' initiative that could slow economic young people i recovery, scaring away employers and of "opportunit further hindering the economic growth affordable edt isspoke, but not you think he did .Y: on, whom I had the honor on campus last Thurs- John Kerry's (D-Mass.) - the catalyst of recent Republicans - to link Iraq in an interesting way. gested that Kerry mere- le word incorrectly: It is intelligence" that forces nto Iraq, but rather a lack y." Without access to an ucation and good jobs, A young people are left with no choice but to enlist. This concept of the "backdoor draft" makes it all the more important to reject Proposal 2, which jeopardizes valuable opportunities for women and minorities. Looking out at the audience and specif- ically the crowd's women and minorities, Jackson informed us that "we are all in the line of fire" from Proposal 2, includ- ing anyone who attends school with their tuition subsidized by the state. Then, of course, there is the fact that this proposal affects women and girls as much as if not more than minorities, placing their access to jobs, special programs and equal pay at risk. These components, often overlooked by those not educated on the proposal's implications, have been deliberately ignored by the MCRI in their campaign. I'd like to thank the Daily for its consis- tent stance in opposition to this proposal and for encouraging students to vote no on 2 in today's election. Lindsay Miars LSA freshman 4