Michigan-centric

[novapsyche]

tlatoani's post about Prop 2.

matt_arnold's post about Prop 2, which references tlatoani's post.

sarahmichigan's post about Prop 2, which matt_arnold quoted wherein he referenced tlatoani's post.

Comments

[xterminal.livejournal.com]

tlatoani's post is interesting and well-thought-out, but I do have a nit to pick. And I'd pick it there except, well, I don't know him/her from Adam, so...

The first point is based on a logical fallacy, the same one used by gun control advocates: "look how well gun control works in England! We should pass it here!" (Of course, now that it's not working so well in England, we don't hear that as much...) The fallacy is reductio ad absurdum, in this case the idea that there is one variable: that of the type of action taken (or not taken) vis-a-vis racism in France and America. In reality, there could be hundreds, maybe thousands, of other variables, just like there are in the gun control debate. Now, I rush to add that I'm not saying that if Prop 2 had passed, it's impossible that Michigan would have suddenly metamorphosed, in a racial sense, into a carbon copy of France; I'm just saying that it's relatively unlikely. At the very least, one would have to consider population density, various cultural markers (e.g., how multicultural is the educational system/process in Detroit vis-a-vis Paris, or any other two random cities), civil unrest brewing as a matter of problems unrelated to race, wage gap, class gap, and all sorts of other things I'm sure I could come up with given an hour's reflection.

Not to say Prop 2 shouldn't have been voted down, just that argument #1, as offered, is nowhere near that simple.

[bonerici.livejournal.com]

Prop 2 is one of those issues where if you explain your reasons for voting against it, you risk being called racist, thus the vast majority of editorials about this issue are about why it is bad for michigan. Pre-polls showed that prop 2 would go down by about 5 points, but instead it passed by 10 percent.