Does Obama threaten affirmative action?

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The erosion of affirmative action is forcing colleges and other institutions to seek new ways of pursuing diversity, with mixed results.

"What had been a national policy is being dismantled, state by state," University of Washington President Mark A. Emmert wrote in the Christian Science Monitor last year. He said his campus has learned that it still can "ensure diversity and access to higher education, particularly by taking socio-economic factors into account."

While Emmert laments the erosion of affirmative action, others say it is overdue. It's great if Obama's success hastens the process, they say, but previous achievements by blacks in business, government, entertainment and other fields already have undermined the argument that racial discrimination is rampant.

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Defenders of affirmative action cite continuing disparities between blacks and whites in areas such as income, education achievement, health care and incarceration rates. These disparities, however, "have roots in problems that are not addressed by affirmative action," said Abigail Thernstrom, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

They are complex, deep-seated factors that put many minority children behind their peers as early as kindergarten, she said. In confronting such challenges, she said, "racial preferences don't solve anything."

To some extent, Obama agrees that affirmative action is poorly suited to address such problems. But it still is needed, he says.

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"Affirmative action is an important tool, although a limited tool," Obama told National Public Radio last year.

"I say limited simply because a large portion of our young people right now never even benefit from affirmative action because they're not graduating from high school," he said. "And unless we do a better job with early childhood education, fixing crumbling schools, investing to make sure that we've got an excellent teacher in front of every classroom, and then making college affordable, we're not even going to reach the point where our children can benefit from affirmative action."

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