To the Editors: A rule against racial discrimination might prevent such discrimination from recurring, but it will not eradicate and may even perpetuate the effects of the discrimination that had already occurred, sometimes over generations, or as in the case of blacks, for centuries. Noah Feldman defends race-based affirmative action as a means of avoiding or lessening the effects of a history of racial discrimination, but he takes a far too narrow, mostly individualistic conception of what those effects might be.
Source : Arguing Affirmative Action
