Ray Suarez, of the NewsHour on PBS, will moderate an interesting panel tonight regarding the conversation of Affirmative Action. Julian Bond, John McWhorter, and a host of others will formally debate the merits of the resolution: Affirmative Action should focus on class and wealth, instead of race and ethnicity.

Should Affirmative Action Focus on Class?

Over the past several years, race-based opportunity policies have been on the defensive. In 2006, 58% of Michigan voters approved a statewide referendum ending affirmative action in public education. A year later, the U.S. Supreme Court forced public school administrators to use socioeconomic status, not race, to integrate segregated public schools. In 2008, Nebraska voters approved a statewide ballot initiative banning all racial preferences, while voters in Colorado rejected a similar measure; future referendums are being prepared in other states. President Barack Obama injected energy into the race-versus-class debate when he suggested that poor whites should at times be given preference over more privileged blacks.

The debate will be held tonight at 8pm EST at the University of Virginia at the Miller Center. For those unable to attend, it will also be broadcast live via the Miller Center website.

While I absorb the merits of the resolution, my ultimate opinion is that it is flawed. It assumes that human nature has evolved past our visible assumptions with the election of Barack Obama and that we now treat each other with more context.

The fact remains that while we all would like to believe we are bigger than this, we still judge people by how they look, how they talk, where they come from, and what images are beamed to us everyday. Case and point, the recent YouTube sensation of Susan Boyle, a frumpy-looking Irish woman who stunned the cynical audiences of Britain’s Got Talent with her angelic voice. We judge people by how they look. The laws of Affirmative Action, in its best day, lawfully tries to even out the playing field.