Could Obama be the change agent on racial preferences?

Conservatives perked up when Obama last year on ABC said the following.

I think that my daughters should probably be treated by any admissions officer as folks who are pretty advantaged, and I think that there's nothing wrong with us taking that into account as we consider admissions policies at universities. I think that we should take into account white kids who have been disadvantaged and have grown up in poverty and shown themselves to have what it takes to succeed. -- Barack Obama, May 13, 2007

Stuart Taylor argues that Obama has a real opportunity to live up to his rhetoric of being a change agent. Taylor recommends that Republicans press him to see if that was an empty statement or if he really means that we should move beyond such racial preferences. He points out data that show that blacks who get into college come overwhelmingly from middle and upper class black families and are accepted over economically underprivileged whites and Asians-Americans. This is the line of attack that he suggests that Republicans could take.

The Republican nominee could say during the debates, or Republicans could say in campaign ads: "Senator Obama, in May 2007 you suggested that colleges should stop giving racial preferences to affluent, advantaged African-Americans and instead give special consideration to disadvantaged kids of all races. But at other times you have supported the current regime of giving racial preferences to affluent black students, in many cases, at the expense of less affluent, better-qualified Asian-Americans and whites. Aren't you being inconsistent? Which is it? Do you want to continue favoring upper-income blacks over less affluent whites and Asian-Americans, or not?

"Also, do you agree with the suggestion made five years ago by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and her four most liberal colleagues that racial preferences should be phased out within no more than 25 years? Isn't it already time at least to start moving away from counting by race? Or do you want to perpetuate preferences into the indefinite future?"

Republicans could also put a spotlight on the magnitude and social costs of the current racial-preference regime by publicizing recent studies that show how the double standard thrusts many supposed beneficiaries into academic competition for which they are so unprepared that they fail, drop out, or lose confidence.

Such a line of argument could put Obama in a tight spot. If he were to embrace the current racial-preference regime, he would forfeit his appeal to many whites (and perhaps Asian-Americans) who might otherwise vote for him.

I think that Taylor is correct that the pro-racial preference position is not a winner with the American people. And no matter what Obama said to George Stephanopolous, Obama has taken the typical liberal position in the past. He opposed the Michigan ballot initiative to ban racial preferences, a proposition that passed by 16 percentage points despite a well-funded campaign against it. And he has said that America can't move beyond such preferences until we fix American education. Well, that's a goal that isn't going to be achieved in our lifetime so any suggestion that he's willing to shift away from such preferences is just words and not a proposed policy.

I just can't picture John McCain making that sort of argument. It's not an issue I've ever heard him speak about. It's not an issue that reporters are asking candidates about now. So, for the Republicans to make the sort of argument that Stuart Taylor recommends they would have to raise the issue themselves. And immediately the punditocracy would suggest that the Republicans are using the issue as a stalking horse for a racial argument against Obama. TV reports would resurrect that infamous Jesse Helms ad when he was running against a black candidate showing a white pair of hands crumbling up a rejection slip and saying that the person needed that job but didn't get him because of affirmative action. The story would then be not about Obama's position on affirmative action, but the GOP's use of a racial attack. It wouldn't be fair, but I can just picture how that exchange would go. It's a shame because I totally agree with Taylor on both his position and on the politicall efficacy of that argument.

And if you don't think that the Obama campaign, helped by his adoring fans in the media, wouldn't make those sorts of attacks on any attempt by Republicans to raise the issue of racial preferences, go read Sean Wilenz's piece in the New Republic. Wilenz, who supports Hillary Clinton, details ho the Obama campaign has deliberately and regularly used the race card to portray all sorts of stray remarks from the Clintons and their supporters as veiled racial attacks.

It may strike some as ironic that the racializing should be coming from a black candidate's campaign and its supporters. But this is an American presidential campaign--and there is a long history of candidates who are willing to inflame the most deadly passions in our national life in order to get elected. Sadly, it is what Barack Obama and his campaign gurus have been doing for months--with the aid of their media helpers on the news and op-ed pages and on cable television, mocked by "SNL" as in the tank for Obama. They promise to continue until they win the nomination, by any means necessary.

And if they were successful using the race card against our first black president's wife, imagine what they could do against a Republican.