What does equality really mean? America has had a difficult time answering this question. In the seventeen and eighteen hundreds Americans put African Americans in chains and called them property. We whipped them and we beat them; they were not equal. In the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, women were forbidden to vote. It was frowned upon if they had jobs. It was frowned upon if they were not married. They were not equal. In the nineteen forties ships carrying hundreds of Jewish refugees poured into American ports. America turned them away, and pretended everything was all right. They were not equal. But today, issues of equality are challenged through the idea of affirmative action. Controversy has stirred across the nation on whether or not the use of affirmative action in education is a pragmatic approach to undo the effects of the pre-civil rights era. A line...