As Adam suggests, when people blather on about affirmative action they should be specific about just what they're talking about. Aside from minority contracting rules and some civil service bonuses, there just isn't all that much of it that amounts to much more than occasionally HR people looking around the room and recognizing that if they give all their friends' kids the summer internships they aren't likely to have too many black people in the hiring pipeline. I'm exaggerating a bit, of course, but not all that much.
