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What Free Press?
Obama's Well-Oiled Machine
Not All African Americans Starry-eyed for Obama
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A Majority Minority Nation
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'Where You From?'
No Celebration For Horses At This Celebration
Leroy Sievers
Lessons From Literature
A Sad Week For Georgia, America And The World
Good And Evil And Obama
Brave Old World
Weekly Review
It's No Longer Just About Hillary
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It's A Three-Man Race: Obama Vs The Two McCains
Faith And Our Future
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Holier Than Thou
Solzhenitsyn, Iran And More About Polk
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Back-To-Back Conventions: The Great Unknown
Wrist-Slap Justice For Bin Laden's Driver
Pain At The Port
Report From A Forgotten War (2nd In A Series)
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A Very Civil Forum
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The Disappearing Lame Duck



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Obama And The Case For Affirmative Action
Bonnie Erbe 7/17/2008
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It's a pretty safe bet that the majority of 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 Web site in March ran an article relating the fact that anti-affirmative action conservatives are "seizing" on Obama's run as proof of how passe 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."

Obama distances himself from racial preferences whenever he discusses affirmative action in public. Most recently in May he was asked on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" if his daughters should be given racial preferences when they apply to college. He responded they should probably be treated by any admissions officer as "folks who are pretty advantaged."

It seems like ancient history but this time last year and even into the fall of '07, Sen. Hillary Clinton was garnering the majority of support from African-American voters. Until she made her ill-considered remarks (which appeared to diminish the accomplishments of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and bolstered the role played by President Lyndon Johnson in passing civil rights laws) Clinton was backed by some three-quarters of black voters.

By the end of the primaries, of course, Obama amassed 90 percent of the black vote. But earlier on I remember asking several African-American friends why the black community was supporting Clinton by such large margins when there was an African-American in the primary race. The most common response was that African-Americans trusted Clinton more to do more for their community.

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Posted By: rees  on Tuesday, July 22, 2008

I think Obama has been prety frank about affirmative action being applied according to finacial hardship and not just by color or gender. As an Independant voter I agree strongly with that. Classism is the new racism.

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