President George W. Bush's controversial choice to join the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights once dismissed affirmative action as ''racist'' and ''a colossal failure.''
The views of Peter Kirsanow, a Cleveland lawyer, are contained in an article titled ''The Affirmative Action Experiment Has Been a Colossal Failure.'' The article, written in May 1995, appeared in the National Policy Analysis, a publication of the conservative National Center for Public Policy Research.
''Affirmative action in its current form is racist, demeaning and repugnant to the most fundamental tenets of democracy,'' wrote Kirsanow, a Black conservative. After noting that African-Americans have made ''impressive gains over the last 30 years'' in corporate America, Kirsanow asserts, ''...Contrary to the claims of its champions, these improvements are not perforce the result of affirmative action. Indeed, as noted by Farrell Bloch, author of Anti-Discriminatory Law and Minority Employment, 30 years of affirmative action has done virtually nothing to improve Black employment and advancement prospects.''
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