Douthat puts his nut graf near the bottom:
Affirmative action has always been understandable, but never ideal. It congratulates its practitioners on their virtue, condescends to its beneficiaries, and corrodes the racial attitudes of its victims.
I agree that affirmative action, of today, though not originally, is less than ideal. The best corrective, and I’m not alone on this, would be making it class-based, not just race or ethnicity focuses. But Douthat ignores that idea entirely.
As for O’Connor, my biggest problem with her statement is that by putting a hard deadline on when she wants affirmative action to end, that makes it tempting, and easy if the temptation is indulged, to try to “run out the clock.”
And, perhaps Douthat should read about the Henry Louis Gates arrest at Harvard.
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