by Bill Conti and Brad Stetson

About the authors: Bill Conti and Brad Stetson are contributing writers for Destiny,a monthly magazine of black political opinion and culture.

Does this seem familiar? Chaos reigns in the classroom at a mostly black inner-city school. The desks have been gouged with knives, classroom walls have been defaced with gang-graffiti and the barely literate “students” are out of control, learning nothing. Surely this is the result of racist neglect by an apathetic white administrator, right"

No, according to Emily Sachar, a teacher and author of Shut Up and Let the Lady Teach! This chaos was the result of an affirmative action hire—a black administrator who could not be fired. Tragically, a policy that was meant to help blacks ended up hurting them. This is the new reality of affirmative action...