"It's time to stop complaining about past discrimination and to treat people as individuals, not as members of a certain race."
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Exactly what I've thought for years. The philosophy behind so-called "affirmative action" is based on faulty logic. You can't "compensate" people for the discrimination or unfair treatment they suffered if those people no longer exist. Giving preference to those whose ancestors got a raw deal makes as much sense as throwing a man in jail because his great-grandfather was a thief.
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People who complain about "racism" in America today don't know what REAL racism was. When it was part and parcel of the social fabric, institutionalized, codified, written into law, and enforced by custom and tradition. Nowadays, whenever some ragged vestige of the once-powerful Klan manages to get a dozen people together for a rally, they're always outnumbered ten-to-one by counter-demonstrators. Sure, bigotry still exists. It always will. But it's not popular anymore. That's the difference.
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I'm just a bit puzzled, though, by Mr. Stossel's reference to "(w)hites' preoccupation with guilt." Just which white people is he referring to? I don't know any of them. And I'm certainly not one of them myself.