Affirmative Action

It's too late for that. But Debra Williams is only an individual, and the Black Leadership Forum -- a coalition of leading civil rights groups -- has discarded her for the greater good of its constituencies. (She had still hoped to be validated by the Supreme Court.) Kweisi Mfume, president of the NAACP, says that the deal to keep the Piscataway case from the Supreme Court "was in the best interest of the nation." Presumably …

…action as believing that "once slavery was ended, nothing more had to be done." Also somewhat less than inspiring was Kweisi Mfume's repeated insistence during a "Nightline" discussion that the Piscataway case "was never about affirmative action." But it was indeed an advocacy of diversity as a justification for affirmative action. Mr. Mfume believes he has now found a formula for civil rights victories. "The real fact of the matter," he said on "Nightline," "is