How long must a piece of policy be enforced before it becomes a sedentary chunk of the status quo?

Is there a statute of limitations on the pulse of popular American forethought? Is there a legislative way to repeal a bedrock of society as we know it?

Affirmative action has existed in America - and, for that matter, in Michigan - since 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson issued an executive order prohibiting discrimination in hiring based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin by organizations receiving federal contracts.

America has been a nation of affirmative action for 38 years. And through those years, the nation has been debating the pros and cons of Johnson's decree without making any significant headway, save the University of Michigan's admissions-policy reversal this past summer.

When Jennifer Gratz - one of the plaintiffs of a reverse discrimination lawsuit against U-M in 1997 - and the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative continue the debate by petitioning to include a ban on preferential treatment based on race in the state constitution, we have to separate ourselves from the debate altogether. The group hopes to put the constitutional amendment banning such practices on the November ballot.

Public discourse on the benefits and disadvantages of affirmative action is inherently positive. Coincidentally, debating the issue of affirmative action keeps Americans abreast on one of the topics that interests and divides us most.

Therefore, to support the petition to put affirmative action in the hands of Michigan voters continues this rolling discussion prima facie. Dig below the surface, though, and we find affirmative action not to be as malleable as Gratz and the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative find it.

You only get one chance to cast a real ballot. It's one opportunity to check "Yes" or to check "No." The grandest of our freedoms as Americans takes place inside that little curtained booth in an elementary school gym and lasts about six minutes tops.

Can you justifiably confirm that Michigan voters can seal the fate of a 38-year-old public policy in a collective six minutes?

Affirmative action has been at work for Americans - and Michiganians - for a length of time beyond the bounds of referendum. Affirmative or negative, the policy that Johnson nailed down in Executive Order 11246 on Sept. 24, 1965, has been law in America since. Since then, minorities have held nearly every office of influence in this country aside from the one shaped like an oval.

We find it nearly certain that the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative will have no trouble gathering 317,000 Michigan signatures to put affirmative action to the vote this fall. But what is wholly and indisputably certain is that affirmative action is not a "yes" or "no" decision to be made in a voting booth.

No matter which way you lean in this matter, though, it's certain that the issues fueling the need for affirmative action will be around for at least another 38 years, petition or not.

Bottom line - the affirmative action battle can not be quelled through the ballot box.