Affirmative action debate long proceeded with almost no empirical evidence

Evidence

Americans’ elaborate and sophisticated legal and normative debate about the legitimacy, desirability, and impact of affirmative action has until very recently taken place in something close to a factual vacuum. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1961

Categorization

• SEED: Angles well for an essay on high-stakes policy debates that run on ideology in the absence of data.