First, I see that social engineering by race and ethnicity is a messy business, one that colleges and universities should stay out of. Employers are a different case. If a corporation decides—perhaps because of the product it sells—that it stands to benefit from hiring more women than men, that is its prerogative.

Next, I see the absurdity in the claim that white Americans and Asian-Americans are being systematically discriminated against in a manner akin to how Dixiecrat Gov. Ross Barnett tried to prevent a Black student named James Meredith from enrolling at the University of Mississippi in 1961—the same year affirmative action was born. Meredith was thought by the racists of that era to be inferior. Is anyone suggesting that whites and Asians are inferior?

Finally, I see that Americans have again missed the chance to have the conversation that we really need to have. We need to ask whether the real victims of affirmative action are actually its intended beneficiaries: Latinos and African Americans. Those groups are woefully shortchanged by the public school system, and no one talks about it because there is a sprinkling of Black and Latino students in the Ivy League?

Affirmative action is a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.