According to a CBS4/Rocky Mountain News poll, 53 percent of registered Colorado voters support Amendment 46, which would put state and local governments out of the skin color business. (Source)
I suspect those who say they don’t support it don’t understand the issue. Amendment 46 will not end affirmative action, which doesn’t involve discrimination and preferential treatment. The measure would bar the government from treating people differently based on race and sex.
The Colorado Civil Rights Initiative’s Jessica Peck Corry told CBS4, “The time has come for the government to stop picking winners and losers based on race and gender. Colorado is a progressive state dedicated to equal opportunity and our equal opportunity programs should reflect that commitment.”
Melissa Hart, co-chair of No on Amendment 46, argues that the measure “uses language evocative of the civil rights movement, but it actually is an anti-civil rights measure,” yet she calls Ward Connerly a “carpetbagger,” language evocative of anti-Reconstructionists! On the civil rights movement point, she’s correct. The very thing black Americans fought against back then is still being done today, this time in favor of blacks and in the name of skin deep-only diversity. Government-sanctioned racial discrimination must be eliminated, no matter which group benefits.
Carpetbaggers, you may remember from history books, is a derisive term southerners gave to northerners who ventured below the Mason-Dixon line after the Civil War to establish order and to help freed slaves. By calling Connerly a carpetbagger, Hart intends to evoke similar derision. It’s ironic that she uses the language of people who not only wanted to keep blacks in bondage, but also wanted to keep the country divided. She’s so strongly opposed to Amendment 46 that she co-opts the language of pro-slavery southerners?
How progressive of you, Ms. Hart.
Addendum: Steven Willborn, dean of the University of Nebraska College of Law, called Roger Clegg an “outside agitator” for daring to study the law school’s admission policies. Outside agitators is what southerners call northerners who traveled south to help break down Jim Crow during the civil rights movement. Hmmm…I’m beginning to see a pattern.
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