Barack Obama’s Election Would Kill Affirmative Action

It’s a pretty safe bet the majority of Barack Obama supporters also champion affirmative action or racial and gender preferences in employment, college admissions, and government contracting. It’s an even safer bet most Obama supporters who want to hang onto what little federal courts still grant by way of racial and gender preferences have not considered the devastating impact an Obama presidency could have on those preferences, particularly racial preferences.

What impact would an African-American in the White House have on racial preferences? The liberal Left has not done much by way of debating the issue thus far in the presidential race. But the conservative Right sure has. The Boston Globe’s website in March ran an article relating the fact that anti-affirmative action conservatives are “seizing” on Obama’s run as proof of how passé race-based remedies are for past discrimination:

Influential Republicans and a growing number of policy specialists at conservative organizations, including the Goldwater Institute, Project 21, and the Manhattan Institute, are citing the fact that large numbers of white voters are supporting Obama, who leads in the race for Democratic delegates, as evidence that affirmative action has run its course. Ward Connerly, a black conservative who is leading a national effort to ban racial preferences, vowed to use Obama’s success as evidence for anti-affirmative action ballot initiatives his organization is promoting in five states.

Source:
Barack Obama's Election Would Kill Affirmative Action
U.S. News and World Report