Richard Colenberg makes his controversial recommendations so quietly that you may have

to lean close to understand him.

He's been called a liberal maverick.

When I told him he sounded a little gentle for a maverick, he laughed.

He's maverick because he spent the last few decades working to dismantle race-based

affirmative action.

Do you remember the first time you heard the term affirmative action?

It was probably in middle school or high school.

Do you remember having a reaction to it?

Oh, I was very much in favor of it.

Rick grew up in a traditional upper-middle class, white, liberal household.

This was in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota.

His dad was a minister.

Rick started to question affirmative action in college.

That's when he looked around and wondered, can't we do better than this?

By the way, Rick does not call himself an opponent of affirmative action, per se.

He's more specific than that.

I think I'm arguing for affirmative action, just a different kind of affirmative action,

affirmative action based on class.

So what I'm questioning is whether racial preferences are the best way to get there.

When Rick talks about turning affirmative action on its head, he says he's borrowing from

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, leaders who fought against racial injustice

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