Legacy and privilege ignored in the affirmative action policies of college admissions.

Having just hosted the racist Virginia think tank against affirmative action of any kind, the Center for Equal Opportunity, I thought this perspective on "legacy admissions" was just as important. Keli Goff:

It's the provocative question that polite people don't like to ask in the presence of their friends of different races. Who really has it tougher? Black person A or white person B or Asian person C, Latino person D or multi-racial person E? ... we also acknowledge that there are endless qualifiers to that question. When the word "unless" enters the equation, it makes it easier for people to argue that the equation itself should not exist. Welcome to the 2011 debate over affirmative action.

Let me state this for the record: I don't believe that I should receive an opportunity for a job or admission into an institution of higher learning over someone more qualified simply due to the color of my skin, and wouldn't want to. By the same token I wouldn't want to lose a job or admission to an institution of higher learning due to factors equally beyond my control, such as my last name or my class status, yet that kind of missed opportunity happens to people like me all of the time. (To clarify, by "people like me" I mean those of us who were not born wealthy, well connected and fabulous.)