As affirmative action’s power has diminished, minority enrollment has fallen at many prominent colleges. **
Barack Obama’s political success might claim an unintended victim: affirmative action, a much-debated policy that he supports.
Already weakened by several court rulings and state referendums, affirmative action now confronts a challenge to its very reason for existing. If Americans make a black person the leading contender for president, as nationwide polls suggest, how can racial prejudice be so prevalent and potent that it justifies special efforts to place minorities in coveted jobs and schools?
“The primary rationale for affirmative action is that America is institutionally racist and institutionally sexist,” said Ward Connerly, the leader of state-by-state efforts to end what he and others consider policies of reverse discrimination. “That rationale is undercut in a major way when you look at the success of Senator Clinton and Senator Obama.” Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York battled Obama to the end of the Democratic primary process.
“If people get the impression from Obama’s success that the racial problems of this country have been solved, that would be very sad,” Orfield said. “In some ways we have moved backwards” in recent years, he said.
Wade Henderson, head of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said, “Exceptions don’t make the rule.”
**Which is to say so-called “minorities” can’t make it on their own unless a federally mandated program which discriminates based on race and gender is enforced by law.