Presents a brief historical summary of affirmative action, examines its practices, and explores its future prospects. The article argues that the way out of the racial isolation brought about by the success of middle-class racial integration is to practice affirmative action on the basis of class rather than race, that is, equality of opportunity.…

Concludes that removing research support as a punishment for alleged non-compliance with statutes that are at times not even marginally related to scientific objectives is an irrelevant and undeservedly harmful punishment. (Author/AM)

Examines the court transformation of civil rights from equal opportunity and nondiscrimination to racial/gender/ethnic proportional representation. It analyzes the implications for justice and equality and suggests that it is time to restore the moral ideals of the civil rights coalition of 1964. (GR)