Bill Keller writes on the New York Times op-ed page:

‘A cynic,’ protested The Wall Street Journal, ‘might conclude that yesterday’s decisions mean universities can still racially discriminate, as long as they’re not too obvious about it.’ Yes, just so. The editorial might have added that this is pretty much what the first President Bush did when he appointed a black jurist of questionable distinction to the Supreme Court, insisting all the while that it had nothing to do with race.

I believe in affirmative action as meeting worthy societal goals, but its point is not that it promotes the less worthy, rather that it remedies longstanding and deepseated social barriers to those whose worthiness is less likely to be discovered and recognized. That is not Clarence Thomas. Thomas is not a failure of affirmative action principles; he is a failure of a Republican caricature of affirmative action.