In the wake of MCRI, liberals should drop their obsession with racial preferences and call for class-based affirmative action, says Richard Kahlenberg. He also makes this point:

Some portion of initiative supporters may well have been voting to keep minorities “in their place.” But as a whole, Michigan voters could hardly be written off as right-wing, racist and sexist yahoos. The same electorate that easily passed the ban on preferential affirmative action re-elected Gov. Jennifer Granholm and U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, both Democrats and women, by comfortable margins. A study released in the days before the election by the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity — finding that applicants to the University of Michigan in 2005 with an SAT score of 1240 and a GPA of 3.2 had a 10 percent chance of admissions if they were white or Asian but a 90 percent chance if they were black — undoubtedly moved some voters.