Posted by
Defend America on Monday, July 27, 2009 7:42:52 AM
Affirmative Action Is Just a Distraction
By Shelby Steele
Sunday, July 26, 2009
America's war over affirmative action has gone on longer than any of
the country's military conflicts, and over the decades each side of
this debate has spawned a vast literature of argument. So I feel some
dread in seeing the debate newly enlivened today. Yet the Sotomayor nomination, the Supreme Court's decision in the Ricci case and the election of our first black president make it inevitable.
What is the future of group preferences in America? Doesn't a black
president render them obsolete? Or does an incident like the
arrest
of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates -- with its implication of
racial profiling -- point to the continuing need for affirmative action?
Unfortunately, this preoccupation with preferences may be a fool's
errand. With black youths performing worse on the SAT in 2000 than in
1990, the obsession with affirmative action may only help us avoid the
more troubling reality: the ongoing underdevelopment that keeps so many
blacks non-competitive.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/24/AR2009072402090.html