Racial hatred is usually condemned on the grounds that race is as irrelevant a characteristic as eye color or left handedness and, thus, undeserving of hatred. But if this is what makes racial hatred immoral, then it is not racial hatred itself that is objectionable, but hatred invoked by anything irrelevant. In keeping with our examples, racial hatred — "racism" — is neither more nor less objectionable than hatred of brown-eyed and left-handed people.
"Affirmative action" — race-based policies favoring non-whites, particularly blacks, over whites — is a legalized form of racial discrimination. Whether this type of racial discrimination is justified or not isn't a question with which I am currently concerned. The point, rather, is that the "anti-racists" who demand "affirmative action," asserting not just that it is morally permissible but morally obligatory, acknowledge, then, that racial discrimination can be morally legitimate.
clipped from: www.intellectualconservative.com