Democratic Denver Mayor Opposes Amendment 46
You don’t say?
Mayor John Hickenlooper has announced his opposition to a measure that would give equal opportunity to anyone seeking admission to a Colorado university or a job in a state or local government agency.
Colorado Independent reporter Naomi Zeveloff obviously opposes Amendment 46, too, as she frames the initiative as a “measure that will destroy public affirmative action programs statewide.”
As I’ve written for years on my personal blog, in columns and more recently, on this blog, “affirmative action” and “race preferences” are not synonymous. They are two entirely different policies. One seeks to include more qualified minorities in hiring and admissions pools, and the other seeks to grant preferential treatment to certain minority groups, which also leads to discrimination against members of non-preferred groups.
When will people get it? Hickenlooper sure doesn’t. In 2004, he opposed a bill introduced by Ed Jones, a black Republican state senator, that would have barred colleges and government agencies from considering race in admissions and hiring. Does he really believe preferential treatment doesn’t result in discrimination?
