> I have always felt very ambivalent about affirmative action. Part of the problem is that "affirmative action" takes many forms. Some people assume that it m

> I have always felt very ambivalent about affirmative action. Part of the problem is that "affirmative action" takes many forms. Some people assume that it means quotas and lowered standards, but those approaches have been deprecated (and sometimes outlawed) for a long time. Outreach, anti-bias education, and support programs are generally preferred precisely because they don't lead to the same untoward outcomes that tokenism does. Sure, some people still get left out. I was "discriminated against" in that way once, but I thrived despite that and have learned to appreciate how that policy was just overall even though it was unjust to me. There is no perfect affirmative-action policy, including lack of any explicit policy. The best we can do is ensure that the burden of any policy is as small as possible, and distributed as fairly as possible.