“It’s time for enlightened America to hit reset on affirmative action once and for all,” writes Columbia linguistics professor John McWhorter in The American Interest. By affirmative action, of course, he means the racial quotas and preferences that most selective colleges’ and universities’ admissions departments employ.

“The reason America can never truly come together in understanding racial preferences is not benighted racism rearing its ugly head as always,” he goes on, “It’s because the rationales simply no longer make any damned sense.” Forty years ago, they were arguably needed to reverse anti-black discrimination. Today, beneficiaries tend to come from upscale households or from among new immigrant families never subject to discrimination here.