  A defender might answer in the way that Charles Lawrence and Mari Matsuda do in their 1997 book, We Won’t Go Back: “All the talk about class, the endless citings of the ‘poor white male from Appalachia,’ cannot avoid the reality of race and gender privilege” (Lawrence and Matsuda 1997, 190–191). As they see it, because white privilege persists racial preferences really do balance the scales. Because male privilege persists, gender preferences really do make selections fairer. Lawrence and Matsuda brook no concession: in every case the loser in affirmative action is not the more deserving.