I couldn't help asking these "victims" how much they pay a year for their Harvard education.

"$35,000 a year," responded a student.

I shook my head incredulously. "What precisely about your $35,000 a year education has taught you to believe that you are a victim? I mean, why even go to college if you are already defeated?"

The question went unanswered but the implication was clear - the sort of affirmative action being used by college admissions boards rarely benefits the least among us. Instead, it benefits middle- and upper-class black Americans who have been conditioned to feel they are owed retribution. It's a bourgeois boondoggle that sidesteps individual need in favor of social retribution. I believe their exists a very real danger in embracing the need for affirmative action as some sort of all-encompassing entitlement that reduces all members of a race, sex, etc. to victims. Owed? Victims, all of us? That's not progress, its inertia.

Perhaps the U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding the University of Michigan policy will belie a change in the way we apply affirmative action. Perhaps now affirmative action will be used to benefit the needy. That means breaking apart those conditions that con many young minorities into feeling trapped, despondent and without a future.

Create an affirmative action plan that addresses the needs of minorities while they are still young, and it may just achieve progress.