spanic white males.
             The result today is a large, incoherent system of racial and gender spoils--the only remaining example of institutionalized racism in America--that has by now entirely lost touch with its original justification of compensation for hard times. Even its advocates--as shameless a bunch of casuists as you will find outside the public-relations department of Hell--concede this by implication when they shift the argument from hardship and past discrimination to the current justification of "diversity." And that last covers a further multitude of lies.
             It would be rhetorically shrewd to put on a mantle of reasonableness and, in reply to the question by Commentary's editors about costs and advantages, concede a few modest benefits to affirmative action. But it would be wrong. There are no good effects that can be traced to it--none, nil, nada, zero.
             Affirmative action has victims of varying degrees of obviousness. Most obvious are those outside the "protected classes," mainly non-Hispanic whites but also some Asians, who have been told that they failed examinations which they had in fact passed, who have been denied places at colleges for which they in fact qualified, who have been kept out of jobs for which they were eligible, and who have lost promotions that they had earned by their performance at work. They are plainly victims of racial and gender discrimination, and all attempts to claim otherwise are either ties or self-delusion.
             Next in fine are those members of the "protected classes" who would have succeeded in work or college without the benefit of affirmative action. Their credentials were honestly won, but they labor under the suspicion of favoritism. And that suspicion is inevitable until some social sci
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