Youknow what though? One thing I do like about Obama is that he doesn't fall headlong into the affirmative action trap. Check this out.
As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama has reiterated his support for colleges' use of racial preferences in admissions. But, he says, colleges should also expand educational opportunities among financially needy students of all ethnicities.
"To suggest that our racial attitudes play no part in the socioeconomic disparities that we often observe turns a blind eye to both our history and our experience, and relieves us of the responsibility to make things right," Mr. Obama wrote via e-mail.
At the same time, he added, "we should work to build an America where the qualified white student from rural South Carolina who worked hard to beat the odds, and the qualified black student from the South Side of Chicago who did the same, can attend classes together, learn from each other, teach their classmates a thing or two and vice versa, and together go off into the world prepared for a diverse work force."
In a May interview, George Stephanopoulos, of ABC News, asked Mr. Obama whether the senator's two daughters should benefit from affirmative action when the time comes for them to go to college. Mr. Obama responded by saying they "should probably be treated by any admissions officer as folks who are pretty advantaged."
The middle statement is what I have been saying for years....I've seen too many farm kids with no money gets passed over for every single scholarship in the book (since 90% of them are minority-based) because they are white and male, even though they are just as deserving as a poor Hispanic/African-American/American Indian kid.