No abstract

Whether preferential treatment comes packaged as a quota, a goal-and-timetable, a set-aside, or affirmative action, the consequence is the same. Favoring certain individuals because of race, gender, religion, or national origin inescapably means that individuals not similarly endowed are disfavored for the most offensive of reasons. To pretend such action is affirmative—or that such discrimination is benign—mocks the valiant struggle for an equal opportunity society that has defined America's domestic agenda for the last four decades. The nation lost sight of this fundamental truth during the decade of the 1970s and permitted governments to fashion affirmative action policies that made race, gender, and nationality the final arbiter of employment, student admissions, and contract decisions. It took a series of Supreme Court rulings in the late 1980s to right that wrong and restore the equality ideal that the Court had earlier resurrected in Brown v. Board of Education.