"Racial Justice on the Cheap"

"America fought over slavery. America fretted about Jim Crow and finally put a stop to it. During the 1960s, the nation tried out various remedies for its horrific history, including school integration and, especially during the Nixon administration, minority hiring programs. But by 1978, the nation’s attention was slipping to other pressing moral questions—abortion and the environment, for instance—and has never quite slipped back."

In The New York Times, Stephen L. Carter considers affirmative action thirty years after Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.