Affirmative action, from its inception, depended on a measure of public consent. It rested on a broadly shared recognition that African Americans—among others—had been systematically excluded from opportunity, and that some form of corrective effort was justified, even if it imposed costs on those who had previously benefited from the status quo.
That recognition did not arise in abstraction. It was shaped by events and individuals that made injustice visible and undeniable—by the murder of Emmett Till, the assassination of Medgar Evers, the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., and the stark images associated with figures such as Bull Connor and George Wallace. Together, they created a moral and political environment in which expanding opportunity was not only defensible, but necessary.
The consensus, however, did not remain static.
By the 1980s, a reaction had begun to take shape. It was not, in its early form, a wholesale denial of racism or its consequences. Rather, it reflected a skepticism about the means: whether government, in attempting to remedy discrimination, might overreach—distorting incentives, entangling itself in decisions better left to individuals, and introducing new forms of inequity in the process.
Over time, that skepticism hardened into doctrine. Affirmative action was not simply questioned; it was steadily narrowed. Yet even then, the argument largely remained within a familiar frame: how best to reconcile a commitment to equal opportunity with a reluctance to have the state arbitrate outcomes.
More recently, the terms of debate have shifted again.
The concern is no longer framed primarily as a question of governmental limits, but as a broader indictment of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts themselves. These are now often portrayed not merely as imperfect tools, but as active threats—systems that elevate unqualified individuals and erode standards in critical institutions.
Such claims are serious—and they require serious evidence.
At the same time, merit is not formed in a vacuum. It reflects the conditions in which individuals are prepared, evaluated, and given opportunity. A system can be formally neutral and still carry the imprint of earlier inequities. Any serious defense of merit must therefore account not only for outcomes, but for the pathways that produce them.
And yet, that evidence is often asserted more than demonstrated. In a country where white men continue to hold a disproportionate share of wealth and institutional power, claims of widespread “anti-white” discrimination require careful substantiation. The absence of such substantiation does not, by itself, disprove the concern. But it does place a burden on those advancing it to move beyond anecdote and into analysis.
This becomes more consequential when such views gain proximity to power. The nomination of figures such as Jeremy Carl—known for arguments centered on “anti-white racism”—suggests that these ideas are not confined to the margins. At the same time, recent legal and administrative developments, including increased scrutiny of DEI initiatives and evolving judicial interpretations in areas such as law enforcement practices, indicate a broader institutional shift.
The question, then, is not simply whether affirmative action was justified in the past, but how the principle of merit is now being defined—and applied.
If the aim is a genuinely merit-based system, it must be administered with consistency. That includes scrutiny not only of diversity initiatives, but of appointments, qualifications, and personnel decisions across government. Concerns about standards lose force if they are applied selectively—invoked in some contexts, and disregarded in others.
Recent debates over cabinet appointments and agency leadership have raised precisely this issue. Critics have pointed to nominees whose experience appears, at minimum, unconventional for the roles they are asked to fill—figures such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in public health or Pete Hegseth in defense-related leadership. The concern, in such cases, is not ideological disagreement but alignment between responsibility and preparation. If merit is to be the standard invoked in opposition to diversity initiatives, it must be applied with equal rigor in these contexts as well.
Hypocrisy, in politics, is not uncommon. But here the stakes are somewhat different. If merit is to serve as the organizing principle, it must be more than a rhetorical device. It must be visible in practice.
This tension was difficult to ignore during a recent visit to the University of Virginia. At a gathering of Black alumni, I had the opportunity to speak with former university president Jim Ryan, who stepped down amid pressure tied, in part, to the evolving national posture on diversity initiatives. Ryan had, not long ago, delivered a State of the University address that was both substantive and unifying—an example of institutional leadership at its most effective.
His successor’s remarks, by contrast, were strikingly uneven—awkward in ways that felt out of place for such an occasion. Public speaking is not the sole measure of a university president, nor should it be. But such moments are not inconsequential. They offer a glimpse into preparation, judgment, and the ability to engage a community.
One leaves such settings with an impression—imperfect, but not meaningless.
And increasingly, that impression raises a broader question: whether the current moment reflects not a reassertion of merit, but a redefinition of it—one that is applied unevenly, and perhaps in service of aims not entirely aligned with the principle itself.
If so, the debate has moved beyond affirmative action.
It has become a question of what we mean, in practice, when we invoke merit—and whether we are prepared to uphold it consistently, even when doing so proves inconvenient, and even when it requires acknowledging that the measure itself is more complex than we might prefer.
