Ellis Cose On Passage of Michigan Proposal 2
By Ellis Cose

Following the November 7th elections, George W. Bush appeared before a nationally televised audience to acknowledge he had taken a “thumping.” Less noticed was the thumping taken by advocates of affirmative action, who could not defeat a Michigan ballot initiative that would prohibit affirmative action in the public sector.

The vote was a strong repudiation of the Michigan establishment. Virtually everyone who mattered—both major newspapers, both gubernatorial candidates, numerous chambers of commerce—opposed the measure. “You would say this proposal doesn't have a chance,” observed Caesar Andrews, executive editor of the Detroit Free Press, the week before it passed. It was approved (58 to 42 percent) by much larger margins than any of the polls had predicted, and along very racially polarized lines.

Michiganders did not just repudiate the political establishment, they also rejected the argument, forcefully made by the proposal’s opponents, that women (including white women) had a huge stake in keeping affirmative action alive. Though a majority of women rejected the measure, a majority of white women did not, according to an analysis by Michigan pollster Ed Sarpolus, vice president of EPIC-MRA.

Already, legal challenges have begun; but if Michigan follows California’s pattern, those challenges ultimately will fail.
Precisely because California has already gone down that road, understanding what happened there is, indeed, fundamental to understanding what may happen in Michigan. One thing is clear: despite some exceedingly grim predictions, the sky did not fall in. Most people went about their business after passage of Proposition 209 pretty much as they had pre-209 for the simple reason that the fate of most people—black and white, male and female—has little to do with affirmative action.

This is not to say Proposition 209 had no effect. In two areas—minority enrollment in the state’s top public universities and contracts awarded to women and minorities—the vote on Proposition 209 was a watershed event. In 1998, the University of California, Berkeley enrolled less than half the number of blacks it had the previous year and nearly half the number of Latinos. At UCLA, the numbers of incoming “underrepresented” minorities also dropped precipitously.
In summer 2006, UCLA projected its lowest black enrollment (96 prospective students out of nearly 5,000 freshmen) in more than three decades. Then-chancellor Albert Carnesale labeled low black enrollment numbers a problem of “crisis proportions.” That same month UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center released a research report calling the dearth of black students “a cause for grave concern.” Partly in response, UCLA's academic senate approved a "holistic" admission process, meaning the university would focus on the whole student--not just the academics--and hope for a more diverse student body.

The impact on small entrepreneurs was even more striking. A number of minority-owned firms that once thrived have vanished, said Frederick Jordan, founder of F.E. Jordan Associates, a civil and environmental engineering firm. Prior to the proposition’s passage, it was easy to find minority firms to do work on major transportation projects such as repairs to the Bay Bridge, said Jordon, who is also a past president of the San Francisco African American Chamber of Commerce. But “all the firms were wiped out. In 1996 in San Francisco I could’ve produced 10 or 15 African-American firms that could do any kind of work. Today, I can’t find anybody, zero, zero … for working on transportation projects.”

A new study released by the Discrimination Research Center confirmed Jordan’s assessment. According to DRC’s analysis, most minority enterprises that once sought business from the California Department of Transportation no longer exist. Only one third of those certified to do business with the state in 1996 are still in operation, reported DRC. The study also noted that contracts awarded to minority businesses by Caltrans had dropped more than 50 percent since passage of Proposition 209.

Prior to the Proposition’s passage, its proponents were fond of arguing that minority students would benefit because they would finally be free of the “stigma” associated with affirmative action. California’s experience seems to say that assumption is not necessarily true—at least not yet. Kimberly Griffin, a black UCLA graduate student in higher education, routinely encounters students who assume that she met some lower standard to get in: “People on campus… they’re like, ‘How could there be so many black or brown people here if there’s no affirmative action?’”

It is also far from clear, as proponents of Proposition 209 insisted would be the case, that barring consideration of race results in a better match between university and student. Or that it would improve graduation rates, since students who got into school on the basis of “merit,” as opposed to affirmative action, supposedly would be more likely to succeed. On that question the evidence, at best, seems mixed.

Despite the California experience, few people involved in the early debates seem much interested in revising their old assumptions. That is not particularly surprising. Nor is it surprising that much of the debate over Proposition 209—and now, over Proposal 2—is driven more by emotion and preconceptions than by any reasoned consideration of the facts. But such mental rigidity and emotional fervor do get in the way of seeing what is actually going on.

In a sane world, the battle in Michigan, and indeed the battle over affirmative action writ large, would offer an opportunity to seriously engage a question the enemies and defenders of affirmative action claim to care about: How do you go about creating a society where all people—not just the lucky few—have the opportunities they deserve? It is a question much broader than the debate over affirmative action. But until we begin to move toward an answer, the debate over affirmative action will continue—even if it is something of a sideshow to what should be the main event.

Ellis Cose is a contributing editor and columnist for Newsweek magazine and the author of eight books. This article is adapted from Killing Affirmative Action: Would ending it really result in a better, more perfect, Union, published by the USC Annenberg's Institute for Justice and Journalism. Copyright © 2006 by Ellis Cose, The report is available in its entirety at www.justicejournalism.org/cose.