Obama says affirmative action will be around for the foreseeable future

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last updated 8 January 2015

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said in 2003 that affirmative action should expire within 25 years, but in a new interview with The New Yorker, President Obama says that was a "ballpark figure."

After a white college student charged that she was denied admittance to the University of Texas because of her race last year, the Supreme Court ruled that "schools could use race as a factor if no other 'race-neutral alternatives' for admission could achieve diversity," The Washington Times reports.