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Affirmative action has been debated for more than a quarter of a century. Analyzing both the resistance from the Right and the support from the Left, this text discusses the moral culture that has shaped the affirmative action debate, allowing for starkly different policies for different citizens. It looks also, through an analysis of historical documents and court rulings, at the complex political circumstances which gave rise to these controversial policies. By exploring the mystery of how it took less than five years for a colour-blind policy to give way to one that explicitly took race into account, Skrentny uncovers and explains certain ironies: that affirmative action was largely created by white males and initially championed during the Nixon administration; that many civil rights leaders at first avoided advocacy of racial preferences; and that though originally a political taboo, almost no one resisted affirmative action.