This is one election where it is worth voting. It is a measure of the progress we have made as a people that the people behind proposition 200 have to hide their sexism and racism in their ads and wording for it. They cynically and consciously use images of civil rights and diversity to gain support for what should be called the anti Civil Rights, anti affirmative action initiative.
Affirmative action is a limited but important and positive reform.
It means businesses, employers and colleges have to make a positive or affirmative attempt to increase representation of groups who have been and are still discriminated against. Affirmative Action is a direct result of the stuggles for civil and human rights in the mass movements of African-Americans, of Latinos, of women , of students, of American Indians that grew in the 1960 s and early 70 s. By the late 1960 s increasing numbers of people were linking the murderous war in Vietnam to racial discrimination, to underemployment and poverty at home, to police brutality, to the dehumanization of women and there pay of 59 cents for every dollar men earned, and to an oppressive economic system. Capitalism is a system where human labor on a global scale is exploited, where the land and the water and the environment are merely means to further the profits and wealth of the elites . It is system where unemployment, dividing people on the basis of race has served the few at the expense of the many.