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Home arrow Affirmative Action arrow The Center for Equal Opportunity filed the following statement with the Arizona Secretary of State, which will be included in the official pamphlet materials distributed by that office.
The Center for Equal Opportunity filed the following statement with the Arizona Secretary of State, which will be included in the official pamphlet materials distributed by that office. PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 19 July 2008

Argument by the Center for Equal Opportunity on the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative:

The Arizona Civil Rights Initiative will simply ban the use of preferences and other discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and sex for state and local programs in education, employment, and contracting.

ACRI will not end all “affirmative action” programs. The original meaning of the term was taking positive steps to make sure there isn’t discrimination; that’s still fine. It’s also still fine to “cast a wide net”--advertising and recruiting far and wide to get the best applicants possible. But affirmative action programs that actually discriminate will be made illegal, as they should be. And if a program is for disadvantaged people, it should be open to disadvantaged people of all colors.

Opponents will say there is no need for ACRI because such discrimination isn’t happening in Arizona. But the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix has documented that there is, unfortunately, plenty of such discrimination. See http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/Common/Img/preferencebrief.pdf

Opponents will make other untrue claims--for instance, that ACRI will ban breast-cancer screening programs. Such claims are simply false; remember, California, Washington, and Michigan have passed such initiatives, and there are of course still breast-cancer screening programs there.

Claims like this will be made because ACRI’s opponents know most Arizonans are opposed to racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination of all kinds, whether it’s against whites or minorities, men or women. As one of the opposition’s leaders in another state said earlier this year: "The key to defeating the initiative is to keep it off the ballot in the first place. That's the only way we're going to win.” 

But they failed to keep it off the ballot here, so now they’ll use scare tactics. It won’t work: Similar measures have passed by landslide margins in every other state that’s voted.