President Lyndon Johnson explained the rationale behind the use of affirmative action to achieve equal opportunity in a 1965 speech: "You do not take a person, who for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say 'you are free to compete with all the others,' and still believe that you have been completely fair."

The debate over affirmative action carries with it enormous implications for the lives of women and people of color, since such programs have created opportunities too long denied them.

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