Does Affirmative Action have a Future in Barack Obama's America?

To some observers, the election of Barack Obama may paradoxically sound the death knell of affirmative action, since he is the living proof that proactive measures to promote equal opportunity may well have become irrelevant. Affirmative action has indeed been scaled back over the past decade. Yet, new, innovative strategies are also cropping up to fight ongoing discrimination and promote equal opportunity in public contracting, education and employment. Aimed at minimising the visibility of race and ethnicity, these policies embrace instead more neutral and less polarising criteria such as geography and residence. Race is implicitly targeted yet never explicitly mentioned. The fact that such roundabout measures are on the rise shows that the USA still has a long way to go to reach the post-racial era wished for by David Hollinger in Post-Ethnic America.