AzCRI

Good grief! The web site Color Lines bemoans the “right wing takeover” of Arizona, and for emphasis places a huge photograph of the American Civil Rights Institute’s Ward Connerly above the story.

And why would they do that? Liberals are upset that Connerly championed and Arizona voters overwhelmingly chose race-neutrality in Arizona state and local governments. That bears repeating:

Race-neutrality in government…

…the opposite of the government’s practice from slavery to Jim Crow. It is a dangerous thing, according to people who support race-based preferences, that our government treats free, autonomous, and responsible individuals equally, regardless of race or sex. From the article:

“[NAACP's Oscar] Tillman said that for years groups had been challenging Connerly’s concerted but often failed efforts to get an affirmative action ban passed in Arizona. But this year Connerly had a different scheme. Instead of going through the traditional route of garnering public signatures to get it on the ballot again—groups had successfully challenged that tactic before—Connerly circumvented the public altogether and went straight to the sympathetic state legislature, who put Prop 107 on the ballot.”

Where to begin? Notwithstanding a “sympathetic state legislature,” the public was not circumvented. The people spoke directly on the issue. Whether a measure makes the ballot through signatures (direct initiative) or through the legislature (indirect initiative), it is voters–the public–who decide whether to pass the measure or not.

We live in a representative democracy, whereby federal, state, and local bodies are elected by the people to represent our interests as they write laws. Roughly half the states allow a process through which the people engage in a sort of direct democracy by proposing measures for the ballot. In some cases, the initiative originates in the legislature. Proposition 107 was an indirect initiative, as it originated in the legislature. There is nothing duplicitous or disingenuous about this process. It is the very foundation of our form of government. The legislature’s bill was presented on the ballot, and the people had the power to reject it.

“Prop 107 feeds on a myth Americans are desperate to believe: that the country is a meritocracy where hard work and a bootstraps-mentality are all that are necessary for success, institutionalized inequities be damned. Affirmative action bans rely on this false narrative, which is just as alluring to women and people of color—exactly the parties affirmative action policies are meant to protect—as it is to white people and men.”

A “hard work and a bootstraps-mentality” is a noble one to aspire to, whether or not the U.S. is a meritocracy.

Even if people got ahead based solely on wealth and privilege (read: white skin), allowing the government to give someone a leg up (or a lower bar) in response, based on racial group membership, is more of the same! It also fosters racial animosity, victimhood, and mediocrity. Why not divest the government of power to bestow benefits based on wealth and privilege, if that’s what the government is doing? Government discrimination in the other direction doesn’t solve the problem.

Incidentally, measures like Proposition 107 bar the government from racial considerations. The new constitutional amendment doesn’t apply to the private sector, which is free to continue hiring, promoting, and admitting based on race, barring lawsuits.

It should be criminal to teach a child or to encourage him to think that because of “institutionalized inequities,” he will require special treatment from his government in most areas of his life. A brother can’t catch a break! Teach children to try to excel and adopt a “hard work and a bootstraps-mentality,” despite whatever obstacles stand in his way. That makes for character-building and results in the kind of empowerment money or guilt-tripping can’t buy.

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