Obama on affirmative action

Dahlia Lithwick in Newsweek:

What Obama has done, as in his comments about his daughters, is try to broaden the question of increasing diversity beyond "race and test scores," as he writes in his most recent book, "The Audacity of Hope": "Affirmative action programs, when properly structured, can open up opportunities otherwise closed to qualified minorities without diminishing opportunities for white students." Gerald Kellman, who supervised Obama as an organizer in Chicago, says the two of them never discussed affirmative action specifically, but did talk about programs that "level the playing field." "Not so much advantages in being chosen," says Kellman, "but things like after-school programs, tutoring, summer jobs. Something needed to be done to make up for the things that poverty had denied [African-American and Hispanic kids]." He also says Obama preferred to work through community organizing and community programs wherever possible, rather than legislation.

Asked to speculate how Obama had managed to sidestep so many of the most sensitive issues about race until the Wright story exploded in March, [Andrew] Janis, his former student, says, "Obama never sees race as in its own special camp. For him race and class and gender are all different kinds of social inequality, and they are all interrelated." That nuance has led some opponents to hear what they want to hear in Obama's rhetoric. The Goldwater Institute's Clint Bolick, who is helping Connerly with his anti-affirmative-action propositions, says of Obama, "The fact is that he does not full-throatedly support race-based policies. What Obama is doing is opening the door to needs-based, rather than race-based, affirmative action."