Question for Obama #4, Affirmative Action

From George Will:

In 1978, in a case regarding racial preferences in admissions to a California medical school, the Supreme Court ruled, in an opinion written by Justice Lewis Powell, that race can be considered a “plus” factor for minority applicants. But Powell’s biographer, John Jeffries of the University of Virginia law school, writes that when the justices met in conference to deliberate about the case, and Thurgood Marshall said such preferences would be needed for another century, Powell was “speechless.” In 2003, the court affirmed the constitutionality of racial preferences in admissions to the University of Michigan law school. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, writing for the majority, said such preferences would be unnecessary in 25 years.

How long do you think they will be necessary? By what criteria do you measure necessity? Why are they necessary now, two generations after the civil rights laws of the 1960s?

Source: WashingtonPost.com

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