Colorado’s Amendment 46, the Civil Rights Initiative, looks to be on its way to a narrow defeat.  ”With 91 percent of precincts reporting,” writes the Denver Post, “Amendment 46 was failing 50.4 percent to 49.6 percent, or by a margin of 14,038 votes.”

If it had succeeded, 46 would have ended racial and gender preferences and discrimination by the state in contracting, employment, and education.  It would have shifted the focus of affirmative action programs from stereotyping based on sex and skin color and towards lending help based upon class and socioeconomic status.  That Amendment 46 appears to have lost is not a victory for compassion, but a defeat.  It is not an embrace of liberalism, but a rejection of equality.

By granting set asides–in education, in contracting, in hiring–to women and racial minorities, we turn on its head the campaign slogan of the first black man elected president.  ”No you can’t,” we say to young girls struggling with math and science.  ”No you can’t,” we tell black kids trying to climb out of poverty–at least, “no you can’t” without special favors from those in power, without white male America making the rules a little easier for you.  Women and minorities, say the proponents of preferences and discrimination, aren’t good enough and aren’t smart enough to play the game with everyone else.

Every other state where a similar ballot measure has been brought recognized this.  Colorado is the first state in which such an amendment has failed.  It will appear again on the ballot during the next election, giving Coloradans another opportunity to do the right thing, to see preferences for what they are: racism and sexism masquerading as compassion, and defeatism trumping hope.