In February 1994, the Los Angeles Fire Department prohibited five thousand white applicants from taking its job examination. According to writer and lecturer Allan C. Brownfeld, “This injustice resulted from a 1974 consent decree between the city of Los Angeles and the Justice Department [requiring] the fire department to hire fifty percent of its firefighters from among minority groups.” To ensure that the correct amount of minorities would be hired, he maintains, the department barred a certain number of whites from taking the preliminary test.

Many Americans believe that this and other affirmative action policies and quotas actually discriminate against whites, particularly white men. Such “reverse discrimination,” critics argue, pervades American society and endangers equal opportunity for white males. As Mike Callahan, a white Chicago firefighter, explained to the Washington Post, racial-preference policies “are creating a new class...