Roger Kimball, at Pajamas Media, has an extended essay today arguing against affirmative action, hyphenated Americans, immigration, and multiculturalism.

Kimball’s essay, which draws heavily on arguments from Sam Huntington, offers many of the usual objections to the preceding elements of progressive politics, as well as to such related concepts as arguments by philosophers and social scientists against the use of nationalism as the basis of identity.

What I found particularly striking, however, was this passage about affirmative action:

Affirmative action was undertaken in the name of equality. But, as always seems to happen, it soon fell prey to the Orwellian logic from which the principle that “All animals are equal” gives birth to the transformative codicil: “but some animals are more equal than others.”

Is Kimball seriously trying to suggest that under affirmative action, blacks are now treated as “more equal” — that is, superior — to whites?

I readily accept that affirmative action, intended to compensate for historic wrongs which have led to ongoing disadvantage, is inherently troubling and a delicate balancing act, and often leads to perverse results in particular cases. But could we possibly have reached the point where the pendulum has swung in the other direction?

Leave a Reply