Why would a mother of a multi-race family be in favor of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative?
This editorial was published in Diane Carey's "Carey On" column in a Mid-Michigan newspaper in 2003. The victory of ending race preferences in the state of Michigan guarantees that Carey's two sons and her daughter will be treated equally before the law.
No, I’m not talking about house paint.
I’m talking about my two sons. Both boys live in the same middle class household, have the same family, ride in the same cars, attend the same schools with the same teachers, in a low-crime town. Their backgrounds are exactly the same since infancy.
Despite this, when these two boys go out into the world, one will be discriminated against, while the other will be given advantages he didn’t earn. If they try to attend the University of Michigan, one will be handed 20 free points in the entrance score, while the other will have to struggle to make up for the unearned favors given to his brother.
Would you want either of these futures for your sons? I don’t.
What’s the difference between these two boys which will cause our government and many colleges to look at my sons as if one is an oppressor and the other a victim?
My elder son is an all-American white kid. My younger son is full-blooded Central American Indian, born in Guatemala and adopted by us when he was three months old. One is white, the other is brown. There is no other difference between them in their backgrounds, or in our hearts.
Because my elder son is white, he is an instant fiend in the eye of our government. His brown brother, who has only been in this country for 8 years—his whole life--will be told he has been oppressed and disadvantaged. How?
My white son looks like some people who oppressed some others generations ago, so he has to pay now? I’m sure poor Southern whites and Irish immigrants of the 1800’s would argue this “advantage” definition.
My white boy can get a perfect score on his SAT, yet be denied entrance to U of M, while my brown boy can get a zero and still come out ahead.
Yet, it’s my little brown boy I worry about. He’s the one who will have the real struggle. He’ll be told that white people hate and resent him, want to hold him back, and that he can’t make it unless he has an unfair leg-up.
He’ll never be given his due. His liberal “helpers” look at his face and assume he’s sub-par. There’s a real danger of his being promoted beyond his abilities because some college or business needs a dark face forward. Society will tell him he can’t make it, then cause it to come true by pushing him higher than his talents warrant.
Don’t we have to be racist to the core to believe this nonsense is “fairness”?
My sister-in-law is married to a half-Puerto Rican, half-black man who looks black. They have four tawny-skinned, buff-haired children. When their children started school, my sister-in-law called us to ask, “What should I put down in the ‘RACE’ category? I don’t know what to do!”
My husband said, “Don’t be crazy. Do them a favor. Put down ‘black’!”
Now, isn’t that sad?
This is America? The melting pot of the world? The place which daily lauds Dr. Martin Luther King because he wanted a nation in which, “my little children will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”?
We should be ashamed.
If we want to help someone based upon economic disadvantage, fine--but be completely colorblind about it. Otherwise the son of a black doctor is given advantage over the son of a white farmer.
That’s not diversity. It’s just racism with a different colored hood.
DIANE CAREY is a New York Times Bestselling novelist of 46 novels and owner of a Michigan small-business in Owosso, born and raised in Flint.