Jacoby wrote:
... the reality is that she is white. About as lily white was they come.
If that was true, she'd look like this:
I've never seen a white person in my life, and there are remarkably few black people on this planet. If anything proves that race is mostly a social construct, it's the fact that people look at a person with peach-colored skin and think "white". This doesn't happen when we look at a peach-colored wall that has the exact same shade of peach as Ms. Warren's skin tone. This demonstrates that learned racial stereotypes can alter our perception.
A bit more on topic: I can understand the reasoning behind affirmative action policies, but I think they keep racial stereotypes alive and prevent us from overcoming racism. It might not be the best way to address social inequality, which is the real problem behind the underrepresentation of social groups (not "races") in academic and other settings.