I’ve always been very much opposed to affirmative action, reverse discrimination, any factoring of “race” into how people are evaluated. I basically haven’t changed my mind about all that.

But with all the past and current right-wing hostility to President Obama and any and all African Americans Mr. Obama has known over the years, I must admit I’m beginning to get a new perspective about race in America. Sometimes it seems that the Civil War hasn’t quite ended.

I haven’t yet read anything by Professor Bell, but I’m a lot more open to reading him than I would have been a year or two ago.