The media were so busy spinning the November 7 election as a Democratic coronation and surrender in Iraq that a resounding victory over discrimination failed to receive the attention it deserved. Proposal 2, the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, passed with an impressive 58 percent of the vote. Key politicians, however, were not reaching for the champagne.

"I am sad and disappointed voters said yes to Proposal 2," explained Jennifer Granholm, Michigan's Democratic governor. "Passage of Proposal 2 eliminates some of the tools we have used to promote diversity and create equal opportunity in Michigan, even though diversity and equal opportunity are critical goals for our state." To decode that statement, the Contrarian turns to the case of a young woman named Jennifer Gratz.

In 1995, the University of Michigan denied Gratz admission, but proved eager to admit others based on their preferred status as minorities. This double standard is what politically-correct administrators and politicians like to call "equal opportunity." They claim to act in the name of "diversity," a euphemism for racial preferences, ethnic quotas, and gender favoritism.

Their motivating document is not the Constitution of the United States, nor the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Rather, it is the un-Constitutional belief that all institutions must reflect the racial and ethnic proportions of the general population. As we have pointed out before, this dogma ignores personal differences, effort, and choice.             

The University of Michigan told Jennifer Gratz, in effect, that they already had enough people like her. In other words, Jennifer, you go to the back of the bus. Instead she became the lead plaintiff in Gratz v. Bollinger, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2003. The high court went along with racial preferences in admissions as long as they were narrowly tailored. The partisans of preferences considered this a victory. Undeterred, Jennifer Gratz went to work as executive director of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, modeled on the California Civil Rights Initiative, Proposition 209, which voters overwhelmingly approved in 1996.

Both were based on landmark civil-rights legislation from the 1960s and both faced high-powered opposition. In Michigan, opponents of Proposal 2 included Governor Jennifer Granholm, her Republican opponent Dick De Vos, the AARP, union bosses, clergy, college professors, and the state's major newspapers.             

Opponents slung a lot of ugly rhetoric, calling MCRI supporters racists and sexists, as in California 10 years earlier. They portrayed Proposal 2 as a kind of 9/11 attack that would halt equality, endanger heath-care services for women, and so on. The voters were having none of it and passed Proposal 2 in a landslide of nearly 60 percent. Such a victory sends a clear message, but the quota queens didn't get it.

University of Michigan president Mary Sue Coleman immediately began plotting how she might get around the new law. That has also been the case here in California, but far from the only lesson of the anti-preference vote.

Racial, ethnic, and gender preferences are the imposition of politicians and unelected bureaucrats. When given the chance, as the Michigan results showed, voters reject preferences. The clear policy choice is to let voters make the call and respect the voice of the people.

Contrary to what some contend, this is not the end of "affirmative action." Universities in California and Michigan are free to cast a wide net and help students based on economic need. That is not the same as giving points for skin color. Those told to go away because of theirs now have the law on their side.

Jennifer Gratz proves the value of persistence, but it's not just about her. "The people of Michigan are the ones who have won today," she told reporters. "They stood up to big business, big labor, to the entire establishment and said, 'We want to be treated equally’."

Sally Pipes is President and CEO at the California-based Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy. She can be reached via email at spipes@pacificresearch.org.