Charles T. Canady

About the author: Representative Charles T. Canady is a Florida Republican. He is the chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, and the principal sponsor of the Civil Rights Act of 1997.

By promoting a system of race-based entitlement, affirmative action is keeping America from evolving into a color-blind society where people are judged on their abilities, not the color of their skin. Affirmative action is a system of racial preferences and quotas that deny opportunity to individuals solely because they are not members of a preferred race or ethnic group. By locking deserving whites and Asians out of jobs and schools to make room for minorities with much weaker records, affirmative action exacerbates racial divisions and tensions.

On June 11, 1963, in the wake of Governor George Wallace's stand against integration at the University of Alabama...