SOUTHFIELD, Mich.
The California leader of a ballot campaign to sharply limit affirmative action in Michigan has debated the proposal with a race relations expert before about 1,000 people at Lawrence Technological University.
“I believe it’s inappropriate for the government to choose sides between its citizens,” Ward Connerly said earlier this week. “My government should not discriminate against me or discriminate for me.”
“We’re always talking about affirmative action as if it’s the problem. It’s the remedy,” The Detroit News quoted Wayne State University law Dean Frank Wu as saying. Wu is a former chairman of the Human Rights Commission in Washington, D.C.
Connerly is a former University of California regent and a leading backer of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative. The group’s state constitutional amendment proposal is scheduled to go before Michigan voters in November 2006.
The amendment would stop public agencies and universities from granting preferential treatment based on race, color, ethnicity, national origin or sex.
Earlier this year, the group submitted about 508,000 signatures to place the proposal on the ballot.
Connerly has supported similar proposals in his home state and in Washington.
— Associated Press
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