And now for something completely different...Michigan politics

We've got three ballot issues here in Michigan this year. Prop 5, if passed, would mandate that education funding rise with inflation. It's pretty clearly going to fail. Prop 3, if passed, would either ban or reinstate the ban or eliminate the ban on hunting what are called 'morning doves' but are actually white pigeons. And then there's Prop 2.

Prop 2, if passed (and I'm betting on it passing), would ban all forms of affirmative action in the state of Michigan. Here's a completely accurate paragraph from the New York Times:

“If voters think about it as being about race, black and white, support goes up,” said Ed Sarpolus, vice president of EPIC-MRA, a polling firm in Lansing. “So the opponents are trying to show that it’s not just race, that it would hurt women, hurt Michigan’s economy, and they’re having some success with that.” |link|

Sometimes it seems like everybody opposes Prop 2 -- the governor, her Republican challenger, the Dems, the Chamber of Commerce -- except for the citizens of Michigan, four out of five of whom are white.

For myself, I'm really torn on the issue of how opponents ought to talk about Prop 2. On the one hand, winning matters and the best chance to win now requires playing down the fact that affirmative action programs benefit racial minorities. On the other hand, winning matters and if opponents of Prop 2 lose this campaign without challenging the electorate to think critically -- and honestly -- about race, then they'll have missed their best chance to push the conversation about race into a new frame.

...and now I think I've pretty much convinced mysel that Prop 2 opponents ought to talk about race. Here's the thing. The core of the argument against affirmative action programs is the claim that race doesn't matter in America. That claim happens to be false, but when supporters of affirmative action avoid talking about race, they themselves make it seem as if it were true. I mean, if we can have a debate about affirmative action without mentioning race, how could it possibly be true that we ever need to think about it?