Why I’m Voting “Yes” on the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative
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Shawn Coleman, Denver Post, October 7, 2008
As a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, I pledged my support for Barack Obama, and when I go to vote on Election Day, I’m also voting “yes” on Amendment 46, known as the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative. It’s the right thing to do.
I came to this position after months of deep thought and personal reflection. As a person of color, I had concerns about the unintended consequences that the opponents of this measure claim.
{snip}
Amendment 46 specifically prohibits our government from using race or gender as factors in public hiring, public contracting or public education. Similar initiatives, met with overwhelming voter support in other states, have seen minorities and women thrive.
In California, minority students enrolled in the University of California system are much less likely to drop out. Black and Latino student enrollment is up at seven of nine UC campuses and women now constitute nearly 60 percent of the systemwide student population.
Race and gender-based affirmative action sets low expectations for minorities and women. Do we really want to continue policy that allows us to as a society say, “No, we can’t do better”?
{snip} Good parents, including my mother, know that the only way to break the cycle of inequity would be for her children to do something comparatively extraordinary. {snip}
In return, she expected excellence from us, teaching us that reliance on assistance programs is not the same as success, and that to be truly free you must be judged worthy exclusively on your merits absent of pity. {snip}
The assumption that a person who is a minority can only achieve greatness with accommodations breeds a culture that expects us to fail. Policy cannot cure bias; the only treatment for this social disease is the example of successful, undeniably qualified women and people of color.
{snip}
Good public policy is forged when we begin with where we agree. We all agree that the biggest obstacle to educational and employment opportunities is a person’s economic status. This is true in urban and rural Colorado and is consistent regardless of race or gender.
Affirmative action also allows us to take the easy way out by focusing on race and gender rather than the real and more serious and challenging problem of economic inequity. The biggest barrier to higher education is money. And the biggest barrier to long-term employment success is education.
To be clear, Amendment 46 prohibits only state institutions from employing preferential treatment programs. Targeted affirmative action programs will still be allowed by private and non-profit organizations provided they are not using public money to implement them.
{snip}
Join me in supporting Amendment 46, a true civil rights initiative that makes our state government treat us all equally.
Shawn Coleman is a Boulder County Democratic Party precinct captain.
(Posted on October 8, 2008)
Comments
Now that the United States has collapsed, the final death of freedom will include a global consolidation of all governments and businesses, followed by the implementation of a single, global currency, global health and living standards, global government and law standards, and erasure of all outstanding debts. Personal transportation will become a luxury beyond the
reach of nearly everyone.
Wages as they exist today will be replaced with electronic credits. All personal “earnings” will go directly to the world government to allocate and redistribute according to its charter. Employment will be compulsory for all citizens in the working caste (e.g., the lower 99.8%). Each citizen’s path in life will be managed and controlled, including where they live and what job they hold. 99.8% of the world’s inhabitants will work solely for e-credits that can be exchanged for food,
shelter, clothing, and access to communications. All personal weapons will be completely banned. The rights of the working caste will consist only of food, shelter, clothing, and communications, as guaranteed in a new world charter. 99.8% will exist in the womb-to-tomb system where the world government provides for all human needs. The working caste will be
electronically-branded for identification, access, and control purposes.
Procreation will be eliminated through mandatory sterilization at birth. The human populace will plummet. The next phase of humanity will emerge strictly from genetically-engineered clones, designed to live and work longer. They will be engineered to be more docile, obedient, and compliant, existing solely to meet the needs of the upper 0.2%.
For most people in the world, the changes will represent a large increase in their standard of living. Those who resist the changes will be erased. The top 0.2% will live in extreme luxury, far beyond the highest standards of today, and completely detached and protected from exposure to the world’s
working caste.
All of these events will transpire because the people will demand it; just like they demanded the federal government’s bailout of Wall Street.
It’s only a matter of time.
Posted by at 6:30 PM on October 8
I voted yes on California’s anti affirmative action Prop 209 13 years ago. The proposition passed by a solid majority, around 55 percent I believe.
But the law has never been enforced. No enforcement provisions were built into the law. And of course, California is ruled by a coalition of viciously anti white government employees and white radical commie Judges who are intent on a “final solution” to eliminate whites from California.
Since Prop 209 was passed affirmative action has gotten much, much worse. For instance, blacks who entered the Los Angeles Police Academy at least fit the height and weight requirements, were not felons and did well on the physical fitness part of the test.
But now only hispanics may enter the police academy and police force. The police department has not just dumbed down the written tests for the hispanics. They are now 30 pounds overweight at age 25, failed the physical fitness test, can’t run, can’t climb a 6 foot fence, and are now being admitted with “mild felony” records and numerous gang affiliations, such as the brothers and uncles with whom they live.
So don’t get your hopes up. Colorado is a liberal state and its anti white marxist Judges will soon get rid of the anti affirmative action law.
Posted by margaret at 6:32 PM on October 8
Break the cycle of inequity? He shows his racism while altruistically patting himself on the back.Blacks are never clever enough to hide their victimhood status.
Posted by datroof at 8:55 PM on October 8
“Break the cycle of inequity? He shows his racism while altruistically patting himself on the back.Blacks are never clever enough to hide their victimhood status.”
Oh come on! While the author obviously subscribes to the belief that the differences between blacks and whites are caused by a universally equal nature that blacks have underharnassed — a belief with which I assume most of us here disagree — the effect of the writing, and especially of the sentence from which you quote and the two following, is only very mildly one of helplessness under a white prejudice the presence of which they deceptively state, and is concurrently one of a strong belief that, if blacks are indeed equal to whites, they should be able to truly show it — a belief in which I find the implicit statement that there is no widespread, conspiracy-like white prejudice which only profound affirmative action can counter.
We see blacks always assuming a reason behind white behavior that is malevolent, and almost always worse than the reality — finding “racism” under every rock. But it seems to me some times that many whites do the same thing — embark on knee-jerk “oh he’s black notice how racist he is; now I’m going to make a derogatory statement about blacks to wrap this up” reactions, the contents of which are so often true that you might upon finding this site go for a while without realising them as said reactions, only to realize when it happens that a black topic comes up of which they are not accurate, yet they are still said.
I don’t think your post is nothing but this — I can see “patting himself on the back” most in the “easy way out”, which suggests “we have to rise to the occasion of white prejudice” — but it is to a significant degree, in that it suggests this author’s views belong to the group of the standard drivel, when they are I think leagues better and ought to be considered outside it.
Posted by Sunder at 1:33 PM on October 9
So don’t get your hopes up. Colorado is a liberal state and its anti white marxist Judges will soon get rid of the anti affirmative action law.
People ought to read this, about Michigans anti-affirmative action proposition and its effects, seeming to attest the quoted:
http://www.amren.com/ar/2007/01/index.html
Some quotations:
“On November 8, the day after the proposal passed, the president of the University of Michigan (U-M), Mary Sue Coleman, staggered to the microphone in a state of distress. In return for her annual salary of $742,148, the taxpayers of Michigan got the following statement: “I will not allow this university to go down the path of mediocrity. That is not Michigan. Diversity makes us strong, and it is too critical to our mission, too critical to our excellence, and too critical to our future to simply abandon.””
“The Supreme Court ruled that racial discrimination in admissions does not violate the Constitution, but the mechanical, numerical manner in which the undergraduate college implemented it does. On the same day, the Supreme Court ruled in Grutter v. Bollinger that the discrimination U-M’s law school practiced, which was at least as great as that practiced by the undergraduate school, was being done in the correct, flexible, constitutional manner. As the justices put it, race was part of a “highly individualized, holistic review of each applicant’s file,” rather than the cold formula the undergraduate school used. However, the majority also stated:
“It would be a sad day indeed, were America to become a quota ridden society, with each identifiable minority assigned proportional representation in every desirable walk of life. But that is not the rationale for programs of preferential treatment; the acid test of their justification will be their efficacy in eliminating the need for any racial or ethnic preferences at all… We expect that in twenty-five years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.”
In their dissent from the majority in the Gratz decision, Justices Ruth Ginsburg and David Souter pointed out that rulings like these would simply encourage universities to discriminate with “winks, nods, and disguises,” rather than openly and honestly. That, of course, is exactly what U-M proceeded to do, and the evidence now is available for all to see.”
I think the poster I quoted is correct; the measures that have passed have not ended affirmative action. However, that they did not — that the intended good effect did not materialize — I do not think means that they need not have been voted into effect to begin with, as the intended effect is not the entirety of the effect, and I think these measures have certainly had unintended and mostly as of yet unrecognized benefits. The very passing of the measures — the awareness that the majority does not value discrimination — seems to me that it can only create benefits, and must contain them; that from the subtle change in many mental landscapes the measures’ passing effected, something pleasing will occur that would not have occured had the futility of achieving the main effect kept people from action. What gets you ready to get ready to get ready to do something is every bit as important, every bit as much to be valued, as the actual doing of that something.
And so, I think nobody who may vote for the enaction of Amendment 46 (among whom I am!) should by the inability of similar measures to end affirmative action be deterred from doing so.
Posted by Sunder at 2:50 PM on October 9
To the first anonymous poster on this thread: I’d be very curious to exchange ideas with you. The NWO is def. a reality.
Posted by Ben at 8:56 AM on October 10