Ask any Black student at Princeton or Black students at any peer institution the same, and the odds are quite good that the celebration of their admission was diminished by a claim of unearned benefit. “Affirmative action” is said with a sneer. It is a straw man of the right wing. Because of course college admissions are not an exercise in fairness, no matter what the brochures claim. They are a product of all sorts of inequality. It is not as though labor and talent are inconsequential; it is just that they don’t count for nearly as much as opportunity.
