The latest setback took place in Michigan late in March. Judge Bernard Friedman of the U.S. District Court in Detroit ruled that the admissions system at the University of Michigan Law School was illegal because it favored black and Hispanic applicants. The decision, the implementation of which is on hold pending appeals, came less than four months after another federal judge in Detroit, Patrick Duggan, handed defenders of affirmative action a rare victory, upholding the university's even more race-conscious undergraduate admissions policies. One or both cases could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court -- which, given its current leanings, may well deliver a death blow to racial and ethnic preferences in college admissions.

In a time when ideological polemics are generally muted, few issues arouse as much intensity as affirmative action -- particularly when it comes to educational opportunities, long seen as the key to a better life. Yet, despite the passions, the debate remains hobbled by taboos. Even conservatives often soft-pedal their opposition to racial preferences for fear of being tarred as racist: It's telling that when the topic came up in one of the presidential debates, George W. Bush gave an evasive answer proclaiming his support for "affirmative access."

Affirmative action's defenders, too, have always thrown a smoke screen around the subject. For the most part, they staunchly and indignantly deny that there are any such things as quotas, race-based admissions or lower standards for minority applicants. Schools, they say, take race into account as only one of many factors in selecting students -- just like geographical origin, community service or special talents and skills -- as they are permitted to do under the Supreme Court's 1978 ruling in Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke.

Yet, apart from the question of whether government institutions should sort citizens by race to any degree at all, the claim that race has been merely a "plus factor" in admissions to public universities does not withstand factual scrutiny -- which is why universities have long tried to keep these policies under wraps. Whatever the moral and practical virtues of diversity, one may legitimately ask if any system that requires Soviet-style secrecy and deception in order to function can fail to have a corrosive effect, not only on the academic climate but on race relations.

The two lawsuits against the University of Michigan (filed by white applicants who claim that they were unfairly denied admission while less-qualified blacks and Latinos were accepted) provide some of the strongest evidence that at many schools, race or ethnicity has not been merely one of many ingredients in admissions but often the key ingredient.

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