Ross Douthat is the new right-wing kid on the NY Times op-ed block. He lives up to his job description by writing a plea for an end, by 2028, to what he calls "race-based discrimination."

According to Douthat this horrible thing, that corrodes racial attitudes among whites, is affirmative action. 

Go check it out and come back here for the letter I wrote to the editors of the Times. I am not saying it will be published. I doubt it, actually, but you can see what Times readers may not have the privilege of reading.

This way to the egress.

The idea that affirmative action is "race-based discrimination," as Mr. Douthat would have it, is patent nonsense. 

Indeed, his premise that having a non-white majority in the country will somehow end racism and preferential treatment for whites is completely ahistorical. 

Consider apartheid South Africa, which was always a white-minority regime. And, somehow, that didn't stop the whites from discriminating against the African majority.

Douthat also refers to Senator Jeff Sessions as having "a history of racially charged remarks." That is entirely too euphemistic. Sessions called the NAACP "un-American" because it "forced civil rights down the throats of people." He also referred to a white civil rights lawyer as a "disgrace to his race."

These comments are not "racially charged." They are racist.

Additionally, Douthat indicates a weak understanding of "Supreme Court jurisprudence" by interpreting Sandra Day O'Conner's statement that “the Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today,” as meaning that "some kinds of affirmative action may no longer be permissible."

O'Conner didn't make a statement of precedent, but a suggestion, a thought about the future, regardless how much Douthat might want to maintain white privilege for himself and his benighted white male cohort. 

Douthat finishes his essay of inaccuracy and defense of white privilege by claiming that affirmative action "condescends to its beneficiaries, and corrodes the racial attitudes of its victims." The corrosion of racial attitudes among the so-called victims comes most directly and most clearly from the racist propaganda that Douthat is putting forth in this article. 

I wonder if Douthat and his ilk have ever attacked the longest-lived and most powerful version of academic affirmative action: legacy admissions. This is affirmative action for the privileged white and wealthy, a system which achieved its heights with our last president, George W. Bush, a man who never earned anything on his own, including the Presidency.