Tim Noah points out, "The Republican Party doesn't offer much to African-Americans," but he doesn't mention that the democrats generally support racial preferences is admissions, hiring and contracting that hurt whites and Asians.

However, Asian-Americans, especially of Indian descent (of which I am one) generally vote democrat despite opposing racial preferences. Most of the kids I went to high school with who used to complain that "the University of California is against Asians" now vote democrat anyway. However, I know that many Asians hope that they too will be given racial preferences such as when Asian Indians were added to the disadvantaged groups list in Ohio back in the 1990's.

I don't know how afraid of affirmative action the average white person is, but I know that I see it as social engineering working against me as an Asian.

Personally, I think the issues are more varied and complex than just affirmative action. Also, white women have benefited from affirmative action over the years.

In any case, your comments were interesting on the topic of Asians and AA. I'm surprised that your high-school friends viewed UC as "against" Asians. Were they talking as students or prospective employees? At the UC campus I attended as a grad student, more than 45% of undergraduates were of Asian descent, surpassing caucasians. However, most were of Chinese origin-- Indians were a small percentage.

I've always been impressed with Asian academic accomplishments at all levels, especially among Indians. I have never viewed them as "disadvantaged" in terms of educational opportunities here in the US, and they certainly seem to dominate the technical, engineering and science-oriented fields. I also understand that many Indians are recruited from overseas for engineering and other tech jobs under specific work visas requiring their expertise. But perhaps I will have to learn more about the educational and hiring preferences vis a vis Asians.

Many American Universities have quotas, not for number of Asians they try to recruit, but for the number they will allow into their programs such as medical schools. I guess if they went by grades alone these programs would be 100% Asian.

Christine makes a valid point about white women benefiting from affirmative action, but even white women are 'below' other 'identity' categories in the weird, intriguing moral heirarchy that underlies affirmative action. The plaintiff in the Supreme Court case to strike down admission rules at The Univeristy of Michigan's law school for, among other choice policies, adding 25 points to the score of someone applying while black, was Jennifer Gratz, a white woman.

Affirmative action's root beneficiary is always intended to be African-American. Women were added to try to shore up the appeal of these unpopular policies. But as Hillary Clinton supporters perhaps now understand, liberal Democrats (for reasons sometimes noble, sometimes self-righteous, sometimes implicitly self-interested) are most emotionally affected by African-American victimhood - my theory being that they are more guilt-ridden about their own 'racist' thoughts than about 'sexist' ones, and compensate accordingly. It's somewhat the same way that the stereotypical religious conservative obsession with sins of the flesh may be traceable to, uh, 'issues' that individual may have inside, and be compensating for as a result. Upper-class, college-educated urban middle-class folks have their demons, too.

When the focus of the discussion of 'victimization' is race and gender, guess what we're not talking about? Right, economic status. My grandfather's white skin earned him the privilege of mining coal, his children were born into that status in life, and it marked them for life. It isn't a Kennedy or Rockefeller or Sulzberger kid who is going to be turned down for a slot at Berkeley or Duke to keep the school more diverse. It's much more likely to be a kid who had to bag groceries for money during summer break instead of being well-off enough to be able to work as an unpaid volunteer for some non-profit organization - which looks more impressive than bagging groceries. Affirmative action, which remains as unpopular as any set of policies for a longer period than any I can think of in US history, is most zealously supported by upper-class whites, and most resented by its targets, middle- and working white males - who, by coincidence, are the group which has suffered the flattest relative growth in income since the early 1970s when these policies were first imposed. Classic class warfare - I've got mine, so now I have an interest in making it harder for my rivals for status to compete with me. Now liberals say they are concerned about this growing inequality, as if they didn't help cause it. Liberal social policy helping cause a problem, then presenting more liberal social policies as the cure. Why on earth is Timothy Noah, not an unsophisticated writer, unable to acknowledge this?

It will be interesting to see how the debate develops over the next few years. Obama doesn't appear to be a strong supporter of a primarily race-based affirmative action. He believes that economic inequalities should increasingly be the underlying consideration-- (much to the dismay of many in the African American community). Perhaps this view would be more broadly accepted among white Americans?

I can understand both sides of the affirmative action argument, however,-- the resentment among those who don't benefit (especially when the bar is lowered for some), as well as the case for addressing historical and contemporary discrimination and disparities. Rather than adding points to people's scores, I would like to see opportunities given to disadvantaged minorities early on to help them compete as equally-qualified candidates. And certainly more effort to address the root causes of these disparities. Affirmative action won't help the alarming rate of highschool drop-out among black youth who aren't even reaching college.

Christine, I have to disagree. Disadvantage is disadvantage regardless of skin color, and it is best (if still crudely) quantified by economic status. There is no compelling justification for legally 'disadvantaging' the child of a poorer household in favor of one from a more prosperous one, strictly because of racial ancestry. To the extent that Obama was defeated among white voters in the recent election, this is a key, if subterranean reason for that.

Timothy Noah and others pretending to be puzzled about why white voters remain wary of the Democratic Party's race politics are in denial about acknowledging the role of affirmative action. It makes me respect this sometimes-astute writer a lot less. 'Race' talk not only brings out the hypocrite in a lot of people; it also brings out failures of nerve in otherwise straight-talking political writers. For this reason I find white liberals kind of embarrassing on the subject, the way it is embarrassing to watch an adolescent white kid try to imitate hip-hop street culture to ingratiate himself with tougher, 'cooler', more athletic black peers in high school. (It doesn't stop at high school, of course.) White liberals intoning the 1967 cliches of racial ideology think they are being morally noble; more likely they are being morally vain, and possibly hypocritical (vis-a-vis their own children) in the bargain.

I really doubt that Obama, though talking the 'post-racial' talk, will walk the post-racial walk. The man and his core followers worship the mythology of the 1960s and the narrative of race relations that was established then, and which remains the fixed, narrow vision through which 'race' is viewed by our retro-minded chattering classes. (It's what I think of as the political equivalent of classic rock radio.) Obama is intelligent enough to know it is strange that his daughters get preferential treatment over a white plumber's son, by law, thanks to these 1960s-vintage brainstorms. But he is also weak when it comes to challenging the orthodoxies of the Democratic Party. Obama specifically urged defeat of the anti-affirmative action referendum in true-blue Michigan two years ago (which passed comfortably anyway), and this year called John McCain's endorsement of referenda to abolish racial preferences in two states this year 'unhelpful'. For Obama to be a real reformer, he would have to confront his own party on some gut issues, and I just don't think that GQ's favorite model has that kind of guts. He has shown a lot of agreeable features in his public presentation of himself, obviously, but courage has yet to be shown to be one of those.

Most disadvantage remains individual. I have a son who is intelligent and hard-working, but who is high-functioning Asperger's Syndrome, which makes it difficult for him, in his awkwardness of speech and gesture, to impress an employer in job interviews. As with race, there is little this young man can do about his condition, which has been manifest since he was a pre-schooler. It's just something we have to deal with. You can maybe understand why I'm cynical about stuff like affirmative action. We are a middle-income household which can't claim 'social victimization' status to explain our struggles. We don't want to. But we also have little patience with the 'victim industry' in our politics, and this makes the Democratic Party still pretty contemptible to us. It gives people - in this case, African-Americans - an intense investment in their 'race', and in keeping the notion that white America is really (underneath) a terribly racist nation alive. (Look for the press to play up threats to the new president from right-wing zanies - as if all presidents don't get death threats, as if the last two presidents shot at weren't Republicans - and a lot of 'we still have a long way to go' rhetoric. The narrative must be maintained regardless of reality.) So, as can be gauged from statistics, the surface changes (more black people in seats of political power), but at street level, very little does. And the white liberals think they have 'done something'.

Christine - 'I have to disagree' needs to be qualified . . . you make a number of points with which I agree, and your heart is obviously in the right place . . .