OneWorld.net (U.S.)

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 14 (OneWorld) - Voters in Michigan gave 58 percent approval to a measure banning Affirmative Action in the public sector last week. It was just one in a series of a measures voters approved nationwide that many activists see as a setback to racial justice.

The main mover and shaker behind Michigan's ban on Affirmative Action was Ward Connerly, a former University of California Regent who rose to prominence ten years ago when he lead a successful campaign to eliminate Affirmative Action in California. In the closing days of the campaign, Connerly--who is black--proudly accepted the Ku Klux Klan's endorsement of the initiative.

"If the Ku Klux Klan thinks that equality is right, God bless them," Connerly said in a video that affirmative action proponents circulated on the online video sharing Web site YouTube. "Thank them for finally seeing that equality is right."

Proponents of affirmative action are going to court to stop implementation of the initiative. The racial justice group By Any Means Necessary filed suit saying states cannot pre-empt federal anti-discrimination laws. Such claims were tried and ultimately failed when the Supreme Court declined to hear a similar case against Proposition 209, California's precursor to Michigan's so-called Measure 2.

"I had a chance to talk to the former director of admissions at the University of California (UC) at Berkeley and he painted a pretty stark picture of what's happened at UC-Berkeley and UCLA," said David Waymeyer, spokesperson for One United Michigan, a coalition of more than 200 organizations including the League of Women Voters, the Catholic Church, and the AARP.

A University of California report released this year found that underrepresented minorities now make up 45 percent of public high school graduates in the state, but just 20 percent of UC students and just 16 percent of students at the system's flagship Berkeley campus. Ten years ago, people of color made up a smaller percentage of high school graduates, but 27 percent of UC-Berkeley students.

"There's been a real change both in terms of the students who are there and the problems that the lack of diversity causes to the entire academic program there," Waymeyer added. "We're very concerned that those very same problems will be imported to Michigan."

Waymeyer takes heart that the head of the University of Michigan Mary Sue Coleman continues to speak out for diversity on campus.

"I will not allow our university to go down the path of mediocrity," she told reporters after results showed Measure 2 headed for victory.

She asked the university's lawyers to examine every possible avenue to continue diversity programs.

"Diversity makes us strong," she said. "It's too critical to our mission, too critical to our excellence to abandon."

Anti-immigrant measures also did well at the ballot box this election year. Voters in Arizona passed initiatives making English the state's official language and barring undocumented immigrants from going free on bail, receiving state sponsored education or child care, or receiving punitive damages in lawsuits.

Voters in Colorado approved two immigration measures. Referendum H, which denies a state tax credit to employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers, got 50.8 percent of the vote, according to unofficial returns. Referendum K, which directs the state attorney general to sue the federal government to demand enforcement of immigration laws, got 56 percent.

But immigrant voters will have a stronger voice in 2008, says Mariana Bustamante, education director of the American Civil Liberties Union's immigrant rights project. That's because many Latinos who mobilized against HR4437, the harsh immigration bill passed by the House of Representatives earlier this year, will have completed the process of becoming citizens.

"For this election it was a little bit too soon," Bustamante told OneWorld. "There were a lot of people--permanent residents--who wanted to vote, but there wasn't enough time for them to become citizens and register. So we're going to see a lot of the effects of the marches in 2008 and afterwards."

Immigrant voters did win a few victories this election year. In two high-profile races where illegal immigration was at issue, the anti-immigrant candidate lost big. In Arizona, Republicans J.D. Hayworth and Randy Graf lost handily to more moderate voices.

Hayworth, a six-term congressman, who wrote a book entitled Whatever It Takes: Illegal Immigration, Border Security and the War on Terror, called for a three-year ban on legal immigration from Mexico.

Graf, a former state representative and member of the Minuteman vigilantes, supported calls to reinstate the so-called "Operation Wetback," a 1950s federal deportation program that rounded up thousands of undocumented immigrants. Graf garnered just 42 percent of the vote in his run for a seat vacated by moderate Republican Jim Kolbe.