What’s worse than being the target of a critical op-ed by Thomas Sowell? Getting the one-two punch by Sowell in successive op-eds! Poor James McPherson--yep, the McPherson of Civil War historian fame--penned an essay for Perspectives entitled "Deconstructing Affirmative Action"
where he confesses his guilt over being a successful white historian.

Curiously, for penance he has chosen not to give up what he considers his ill-gotten gains, i.e., a job at an elite university at the expense of blacks who supposedly never had the same chance. No, he has decided instead to put his fame and reputation on the public line by authoring an editorial espousing the virtues of today’s affirmative action regime. In other words, his faux guilt has been followed up with faux penance, for how could one’s reputation be sullied by airing views perfectly in keeping with the conventional wisdom of the academic elite?

Thomas Sowell, a fellow member of the American Historical Society of which McPherson is the current president, delivered the knockout blows to McPherson’s lone pity party in "Quota ’Logic’" and
"Quota ’Logic’ Part II". If only McPherson would read them and weep.