No Retreat on Affirmative Action Under Obama, Black Think Tank Predicts

Diverse Issues in Higher Education
by Ronald Roach
Nov 6, 2008, 06:12

An administration under President-elect Barack Obama will protect race-based affirmative action in education and employment, political pundits said at a post-election analysis discussion convened Wednesday at the nation’s leading think tank on African-American affairs.
Responding to the idea floated by some observers that a post-racial Obama administration might lend support to class-based affirmative action over race-based affirmative action, a leading analyst on race in American politics said he does not expect the new president to abandon racially conscious affirmative action, which is widely accepted and legally permissible in higher education.
Obama has told news media interviewers over the past year that affirmative action would not be necessary for his two young daughters because of the privileged life he and his wife have provided for them. He has said that class-based affirmative action in higher education is appropriate for economically disadvantaged Whites as well as for non-Whites.
Dr. Ronald Walters, a professor of government and the director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland, told an audience at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C. that “some people have drawn the conclusion because of what he said about his daughters” that Obama favors class-based affirmative action.
“He’s not come up with a class-based notion of affirmative action” to supplant racially conscious affirmative action, according to Walters. [Full story: http://diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_11930.shtml]