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At Harvard College, about nine of every ten applicants is denied admission.^xx Fifteen percent of the students are black or Hispanic.^xxi "Even if every one of these students were forced to surrender his place to a white or Asian student ... acceptance rates for whites and Asians would increase by only one or two percentage points."^xxii

Harvard could accommodate more qualified students by denying admission to some legacies whose average SAT scores are lower than black students'. But no one seems to think the children of alumni should be kept out because they are less deserving.

Look at it this way - it is the fourth quarter of a football game between the white team and the black team. The white team is ahead 145 to 3. The white team owns the ball, the uniforms, the field, the goalposts, and the referees. There are two minutes left to play. All of a sudden the white quarterback, who feels badly about things that happened before he entered the game, turns to the black team and asks, "Say, fellows, can't we just play fair?"

But here, "fair" is a farce. It means freezing the status quo in place, permanently fixing inequality as part of the American scene. It is part of a concerted effort to dismantle the legacy of the movement for civil rights.

The protection and extension of that legacy is our collective challenge. It will require greater efforts if we are to achieve grander victories.

If we face completion of an old mission, we face an old challenge as well - how do we engage the American majority more fully and in a more sustained way in the struggle for fairness and justice?

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