Obama and the obvious

The issue of affirmative action is absent this presidential campaign so far, even though neither Democrats nor Republicans have been loath to exploit race and ethnicity when convenient.

None of their Web sites treats affirmative action as a major policy issue. Neither has it been a factor (has it been mentioned at all?) in debates -- so much so that when the conservative National Review Online wanted to castigate Hillary for her position on racial preferences, it had to refer to a press release from her Senate office about the Supreme Court's ruling in the University of Michigan case, back in 2003.

Of the major candidates' Web sites, it is Barack Obama's that contains the most direct references to affirmative action. It has three of his speeches from last year that mention it, including one in October in East L.A.

That Obama spoke about affirmative action in front of a largely Hispanic crowd is not without meaning. Neither is the fact that anti-affirmative-action activist Ward Connerly, who organized efforts to ban racial preferences in California, Michigan and Washington, now has his eyes set on Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma.

Does it foreshadow where the affirmative action debate is heading? With all the anger about immigration, will the two issues become linked?

If they do, the link will not connect all immigrants to racial preferences -- just those deemed to be a "minority."

The way affirmative action works, no Albanian immigrant who owns a plumbing business will qualify for ethnic small business set-asides, but his Hispanic competitor will. The children of that Albanian will not get that extra boost because of ethnicity from college admissions offices, while the son of a Hispanic brain surgeon will be deemed needy and get special considerations.

This system says immigrants who are Hispanic, unlike immigrants from Europe, bring with them impediments that can only be overcome with outside help. Like a disease of some sort.

Sounds like something the rabid antiimmigrant right might rant about. But no. It's the left that supports ethnic preferences insulting to their supposed beneficiaries.

Republicans have zero credibility on the issue. Most of the pack is too tainted by pandering to xenophobes, and even if McCain took a strong position against racial preferences, it would be dismissed as a case of Republicans doing what Republicans do.

Which is why the demise of affirmative action can only be set in motion by a Democrat. And who better than Obama, an intended beneficiary by reason of ethnicity, and at the same time someone who clearly does not need anybody's patronizing help?

In those three speeches on his Web site, Obama defended racial preferences. Yet in an appearance on ABC's "This Week" last May, he said affirmative action should become "a diminishing tool for us to achieve racial equality," and seemed to recognize it would be ludicrous for his children to be treated as anything other than "folks who are pretty advantaged."

Sometimes, what leadership requires is courage to spell out the obvious.

- Roger Hernandez is a syndicated columnist and writer-in-residence at New Jersey Institute of Technology.