Affirmative action has and continues to be a problem, though. The vast majority of affirmative action has favored and continues to favor rich, connected white men. Famous example:
"I remember back in the late 1990s, when Ira Katznelson, an eminent political scientist at Columbia, came to deliver a guest lecture. Prof. Katznelson described a lunch he had with Irving Kristol during the first Bush administration.
The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan Quayle's chief of staff, and how he got his start in politics. Irving recalled how he talked to his friend Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, who secured William a place there as both an undergrad and graduate student; how he talked to Pat Moynihan, then Nixon's domestic policy adviser, and got William an internship at the White House; how he talked to friends at the RNC [Republican National Committee] and secured a job for William after he got his Harvard Ph.D.; and how he arranged with still more friends for William to teach at Penn and the Kennedy School of Government.
With that, Prof. Katznelson recalled, he then asked Irving what he thought of affirmative action. 'I oppose it,' Irving replied. 'It subverts meritocracy.'"
The vast majority of affirmative action has favored and continues to favor rich, connected white men. Famous example:
And the famous example is that... white men network. As do black lesbians, Papuan pearl divers, and for all I know the Turkish blue-ringed octopus (our only social octopus).
The leap from "vast majority" to "famous example" is great, too. I never cease to be fascinated by the bizarre pseudosequiturs that pass for logic in the orthodox mind. It's like tumor pathology - every case its own disease.
What's wonderful is how similar this general strain of disparate impact theory is to the classic logic of German anti-Semitism. Did you know that 80% of the lawyers in 1932 Berlin were Jews, even though only 1% of the population was Jewish? Ineluctable mathematical proof the Jews are conspiring against the Aryans - scratching each other's backs, while stabbing their good German competitors under the table.
Too bad Streicher and company never got a chance to read Cochran and Harpending 2005:
"I remember back in the late 1990s, when Ira Katznelson, an eminent political scientist at Columbia, came to deliver a guest lecture. Prof. Katznelson described a lunch he had with Irving Kristol during the first Bush administration.
The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan Quayle's chief of staff, and how he got his start in politics. Irving recalled how he talked to his friend Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, who secured William a place there as both an undergrad and graduate student; how he talked to Pat Moynihan, then Nixon's domestic policy adviser, and got William an internship at the White House; how he talked to friends at the RNC [Republican National Committee] and secured a job for William after he got his Harvard Ph.D.; and how he arranged with still more friends for William to teach at Penn and the Kennedy School of Government.
With that, Prof. Katznelson recalled, he then asked Irving what he thought of affirmative action. 'I oppose it,' Irving replied. 'It subverts meritocracy.'"
Quoted in http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/09/republicans-to-the-man...