DETROIT
A major NAACP fund-raiser provided a platform Sunday for critics of a ballot initiative that, if passed, would restrict affirmative action programs in Michigan.
“We may have entered college through affirmative action, but we did not graduate through affirmative action,” U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, said in her keynote address at the 51st annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner held by the Detroit branch of the NAACP.
“A hand up is not a handout,” Jackson Lee told the estimated 10,000 guests. “This is the key to success.”
The 50,000-member Detroit branch of the National Organization for the Advancement of Colored People is one of the nation’s largest. The theme for this year’s event at Cobo Center was “We’ve Come too Far to Turn Back Now — Preserve Affirmative Action.”
Michigan voters in November will be asked whether government and university admissions programs should be prohibited from giving preferential treatment to groups or individuals based on their race, gender, color, ethnicity or national origin.
The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative’s major supporters include California businessman Ward Connerly, who has supported similar proposals in his home state and in Washington state. Opponents to the Michigan proposal waged a lengthy but unsuccessful legal battle to block the referendum.
