Stealth Affirmative Action

Last week, when President Bush denounced direct preferences for racial minorities in state university admissions, he recommended programs such as the one in Texas—which guarantees acceptance to students who graduate in the top 10 percent of each high-school class. In 1999, Bruce Gottlieb argued that it’s deceptive to pretend that such programs are anything other than affirmative action. They only work because America’s high schools are still severely segregated, and their purpose is “explicitly racial.”