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             John O'Sullivan.(Is Affirmative Action on the Way Out? Should It Be? A Symposium)(Cover Story)
             Affirmative action has never been simply a "hand up" to "people who have had a hard time." It originally meant preferential treatment for people belonging to the racial group that had had a hard time, namely, American blacks under slavery and Jim Crow, or to the sex that feminists falsely claimed to have had a hard time, namely, American women under motherhood. Many of its supposed beneficiaries, however, had not themselves had a hard time, having been born into rich or successful middle-class families, or having married rich or successful men, or even having married poor and unsuccessful men who accepted a duty to support wives and children out of a breadwinner's income. And, of course, many people who had had a hard time, for instance, poor white males, were not eligible for affirmative-action preferences.
             As time went by, affirmative action was expanded to cover people who had not only missed hardship personally but who came from racial or. ethnic groups (Hispanics, non-Japanese Asians, and Pacific Islanders) that had missed above-average hardship collectively, if only because they were not present in American history in substantial numbers. And the number of beneficiaries was further swelled by adding in newly-arrived immigrants of the same race, ethnicity, or linguistic affinity as the so-called "protected classes," even though they could not have suffered more (or less) hardship in America than other new immigrants who happened to be non-Hi...