are an affirmative distraction if the goal is to help poor blacks–on that much, I gather that Jonah and Reihan (and Ross and I) agree. I take Jonah’s point to be that racial preferences at elite universities are nonetheless not a small matter from other perspectives. For example, if the goal is to create a multiracial elite, then they are not trivial. Nor are they trivial in terms of how race and class “are lived in America.”

I’m closer to Ross and Reihan than I am to the mainstream Right on this issue. I think elite universities should be free to follow racial preference if they wish–and if it is illegal under current law, as can be reasonably argued, the law should be changed. But the regulations, litigation, and policies that make up our preference regime have costs, even if they are not borne by Harvard (or Princeton) graduates. And if the real point of racial preferences is not to help poor blacks, and they are not its real political constituency, then it is awfully naive to suggest that pointing out how “unimportant” and “ineffective” they are at helping poor blacks is a pretty naive way for opponents to go about ending them.