Henry Louis Gates of the ‘Beer Summit’: End Affirmative Action for Rich African-Americans

SCARBOROUGH: "You said something fascinating about class, too. We were talking off camera about where America needs to go in the future. You think affirmative action needs to be redirected?"
GATES: "I do. I think that for a lot of reasons, political and also practical and economic, we should think about affirmative action for the poor. And I grew up in West Virginia with poor white people. They need affirmative action as much as my people do. And I think it would be a savvy thing to reconsider. Also I'm upper middle class. My daughters were born at the Yale-New Haven hospital. They have a privileged life. Do they really need to benefit from affirmative action? Affirmative action was a class escalator when I went to Yale, and I think it still should be. So I want to get more more poor black people into the middle class and I want to get more poor white people in the middle class as well."