[Straight Vermonter]

how are they going to prevent those blacks whose ethnic roots are in Jamaica or Haiti or other non-African countries from benefitting by affirmative action since they were not slaves

They were not AMERICAN slaves but they sure weren't in the Carribbean on vacation.

[sweetliberty]

My point was that there are blacks in this country that did not descend from Africans OR slaves in this country. Since being "African" American seems to be the deciding factor here, how are they going to weed out those non-African blacks? Oh, they aren't? So it really IS about the color of their skin and not about historical discrimination at all.