I think it had to do with the current sin of denying minorities and women equal opportunities. Employment discrimmination was an evil fact at the time of passage and it is one that continues to this day. Affirmative action was not a pure approach that created no new victims (I have been one such victim, myself). It was a messy, blunt instrument. And it has made the country make a lot of progress in the time it was in place. Sometimes you have to threaten to cut the baby in half. And when you do so, even if you don't end up killing the baby, somebody will go home crying.