AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AT U-M: Politics and principles collide AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AT U-M: Politics and principles collide
Republicans Cox and Ford have stark differences
March 19, 2003
BY DAVID ZEMAN FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox is a brash, white Republican who makes no apology for refusing Gov. Jennifer Granholm's request to support the University of Michigan's affirmative action case. "I know myself and I'm standing up for what I think is principled," Cox declares. Former President Gerald Ford is a conservative Republican who makes no apology for endorsing U-M's admissions policy, a stance at odds with the current Republican in the White House.
"I think my batting average is very affirmative on racial matters," Ford declares. "I'm going to say I'm proud of it." Two Republicans. Two starkly different views on the most divisive racial issue in decades, one set to be argued April 1 before the U.S. Supreme Court. All they share is a moral certainty in their position -- and a refusal to pander to cultural or political orthodoxy. Cox insists he won't let accusations that he is insensitive to minority concerns affect his stance.
Ford -- in his first interview on the subject since publicly backing U-M -- insists he won't let the Republican Party's aversion to affirmative action alter his support for race-conscious admissions. "Race in America is kind of hard to talk about without people having some very strong views," Cox observed recently with no small understatement. It's a lesson he has learned through fire. Last month, Cox's refusal to write a legal brief in support of U-M led incoming state Democratic Party Chairman Melvin (Butch) Hollowell to demand Cox's resignation, and provoked an extended debate over Cox's duty to represent the governor even when their personal views clashed.
In the weeks since, Cox said he has anguished over how his actions may be perceived among African Americans and hoped that it would not define his legacy on civil rights. "This is a very easy issue to demagogue as Butch Hollowell did," Cox said. Cox concedes he plunged into the debate with strikes against him.
He is a white Republican, lives in nearly all-white Livonia and spent a career in law enforcement as a homicide prosecutor before taking over as attorney general in January. "I think he's got a steep hill to climb now," Hollowell said of Cox's standing in the minority community. "He's now got to prove himself and, clearly, he is not off to a very good start." Cox said he recognizes Republicans are viewed without admiration by many blacks:
"And sometimes, that's our own fault." Indeed, Cox blames his party for writing off black voters rather than making inroads in the African-American community. And he accuses party elders of outright tokenism in their efforts to embrace diversity. "I'll get in trouble with the Republican Party for saying this, but when I go to Republican conventions, invariably they will bring out an African American to sing the national anthem," Cox said, "to pretend that we're better on race relations than we really are."
And yet, while Cox argues that his career as a prosecutor makes him more attuned than some of his critics to the daily struggles of urban minorities, he resents the implication that because he is against affirmative action he has to prove his character. "It assumes that because you make a decision based on principle that somehow you have some racist baggage in your closet," Cox said. Cox recalls it was only two years ago -- when he prosecuted a Detroit cop for fatally shooting a deaf black man -- that he received racist hate mail accusing him of cozying up to blacks.
"I got the full trailer-park treatment," he joked of the case, broadcast nationally on Court TV. After the officer was acquitted, Cox embraced the dead man's mother, Annie Shaw. "Mrs. Shaw," he told her, "I'm sorry."
Cox, 41, was born in Redford to blue-collar, Irish-immigrant parents. He attended parochial school and became a decorated U.S. Marine before earning a law degree at the very school now before the U.S. Supreme Court. He spent a dozen years as a Wayne County prosecutor, working murder cases and supervising the office's homicide squad.
"When you're working in a large, urban prosecutor's office, people who have no concern for racial sensitivity stick out like a sore thumb," said Wayne Circuit Judge Michael Hathaway. "I know him well enough to know he's certainly not insensitive to the feelings and aspirations of African Americans." Cox notes that his grandfather served time in prison as a suspected member of the Irish Republican Army.
And he said his father could not find carpentry work because he was Catholic. Still, Cox does not take the next step in the conversation, the step other politicians facing scrutiny might take instinctively. "I'm not going to say I know what it's like to be African American," he said. "Because I don't. "Am I supposed to tell everyone what black friends I have?
Am I supposed to show you pictures of the people in my wedding party? That's ridiculous. "If the argument over affirmative action is one we Republicans believe in, we shouldn't have to use gimmicks." In the end, Cox said, he hopes blacks withhold judgment on his legacy, and his heart. "I'm not going to regret this," Cox said of his affirmative action stand.
"If it costs me politically, so be it. But I know over time all the other things I'm doing will give people a much fuller picture of who I am." When then-U-M President Lee Bollinger asked Ford to publicly support the law school after its policies were challenged, Ford did not hesitate. "I was delighted to do it," he said last week from his office in Rancho Mirage, Calif.
The result was a highly personal, widely read 1999 column in the New York Times. "I don't want future college students to suffer the cultural and social impoverishment that afflicted my generation," Ford wrote. His defense of U-M's policy is squarely opposed by fellow Republican George W. Bush, whose administration has filed court papers challenging the university. Ford traced his support for affirmative action to 1934, when he played for U-M's football team. His best pal on the team, and his roommate on road trips, was Willis Ward, the squad's only black.
Before that season, Ford said he had never experienced bigotry. Certainly not during his childhood in Grand Rapids, he said, where there were a few black families in his neighborhood. "I treasured the fact that there was no discrimination -- you grew up treating everyone equally," Ford said. Whether his black neighbors would share that assessment is unknown. But this is known: In October 1934, before the Georgia Tech game, word leaked that Tech would not play against Ward. "That attitude shocked me," said Ford, now 89. "I couldn't believe it."
Over student protests, Michigan officials buckled and ordered Ward to sit out. The decision so incensed Ford, he told coaches he wouldn't play. "Nobody told him to do this. This is something that he felt strongly about," said James M. Cannon, a Ford biographer who also worked in his administration.
It was only after Ford's stepfather and Ward himself implored Ford to suit up that he played. Ford said the incident opened his eyes to racism on campus, and off. "I was dumbfounded that in some parts of even Michigan there was the old, traditional antagonisms toward African Americans," he said.
During his long career in Congress, Ford's civil-rights record was generally positive. He voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, even as he opposed court-ordered school busing. As president, Ford signed legislation expanding federal affirmative action programs.
And he appointed the second black U.S. Cabinet member in Bill Coleman as transportation secretary. "There is no question Ford has been a sincere proponent of civil rights," said Jeremy Mayer, author of "Running on Race: Racial Politics in Presidential Campaigns 1960-2000." "He seems to have had a much greater comfort level with African-Americans than other Republicans." Ford insists his U-M stance has drawn no heat from Republicans.
"If anything, I've had compliments," Ford said. But the one that means the most, he said, was a handwritten note from the widow of an old college teammate, who didn't get to play against Georgia Tech.
Contact DAVID ZEMAN at 248-586-2604 or zeman@freepress.com
News and Announcements | AAD Home Page