| Sumario: | Part of a special section on affirmative action. Contrary to what many conservatives assert, preferential treatment is not something new to U.S. patterns of public policy and has an ethical basis in what could be called a “higher public purpose”: undoing and compensating for a long history of discrimination and white supremacy. The result of affirmative action has been considerable achievement by the “mobile strata” of African-Americans, namely, stable working-class, middle-class, and upper-middle-class households. These currently comprise almost 65 percent of black households. Sustaining this success is a central objective of supporters of affirmative action, together with alleviating the poverty crisis of the 30 percent of black families who are not mobile. In addition, affirmative action has been crucial to the advancement of African-Americans in job markets that were long out of bounds.
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