Both Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton squandered a perfect opportunity to make the case for affirmative action in their recent debate in Philadelphia. In a rush to show how concerned they are about poor whites, they failed to accurately define the issue.

Obama correctly observed that "race is still a factor in our society." However, he stumbled when asked whether students from privileged families should be covered under affirmative action.

"So if they look at my child and they say, you know, Malia and Sasha, they've had a pretty good deal, then that shouldn't be factored in," he replied. "On the other hand, if there's a young white person who has been working hard, struggling, and has overcome great odds, that's something that should be taken into account."

He added, "I still believe in affirmative action as a means of overcoming both historic and potentially current discrimination, but I think that it can't be a quota system and it can't be something that is simply applied without looking at the whole person, whether that person is black or white or Hispanic, male or female."

First, affirmative action does not rely on quotas. Executive order 11246 outlawing discrimination in federal contracting, signed by President Johnson in 1965 and extended by every subsequent president, forbids the use of quotas in affirmative action programs. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has outlawed the use of quotas except in extreme circumstances.

Second, the needs of impoverished whites should be addressed. However, they are not covered by affirmative action and could be helped by antipoverty measures. The presidential debate provided further proof that most of the confusion over affirmative action is because it is too often mis-defined.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights defines affirmative action as "a contemporary term that encompasses any measure, beyond simple termination of a discriminatory practice, which permits the consideration of race, national origin, sex and disability, along with other criteria, and which is adopted to provide opportunities to a class of qualified individuals who have either historically or actually been denied those opportunities, and to prevent the reoccurrence of discrimination in the future."

In her reply, Clinton said: "I think we've got to have affirmative action generally to try to give more opportunities to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds - whoever they are." She then went on to voice her support of early childhood education, making college more affordable, and amending the No Child Left Behind Act - all unrelated to affirmative action.

Some critics of affirmative action suggest that we substitute class as a proxy for race. While that may help some people because of the intersection of race and class, it does not directly address the problem of discrimination. Let's not skirt the issue: If people were discriminated against based on their race or sex, then it stands to reason that remedies should be race- and sex-sensitive.

According to the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, although white men make up only 48 percent of the college-educated workforce, they hold 85 percent of the tenured college faculty positions, 86 percent of law firm partnerships, more than 90 percent of the top jobs in the news media, and 96 percent of CEO positions.

Neither Obama nor Clinton pointed out that children of the rich and well-connected still get special privileges in our society.

We need to look no further than the so-called legacy programs. Universities typically give extra points to applicants if their parents attended the same university. Because George W. Bush's father graduated from Yale (as well as his father's father), he was entitled to extra points because of his lineage.

Neither of my impoverished parents graduated from high school. So if I had applied to Yale - ignoring, for the moment, the issue of race - it seems that I would be more deserving of extra points because of the obstacles I or any similarly situated white person had to overcome. Yet, the privileged are rewarded because of their status.

As was noted in an anthology I edited, titled The Affirmative Action Debate, 40 percent of the children of Harvard alumni applying to the university in 1994 were admitted, compared with only 14 percent of students whose parents were not Harvard alumni.

Furthermore, a U.S. Department of Education study found that alumni children admitted to Harvard had SAT scores that averaged 35 points lower than those of students of non-alumni parents.

Another study quoted in the book found that far more whites have entered the gates of the 10 most elite American academic institutions through alumni preference than the combined numbers of all the blacks and Latinos entering through affirmative action.

The issue of affirmative action is not going away soon. In November, five states - Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma - may have initiatives on the ballot outlawing affirmative action.

As we continue to deal with the residue of slavery, defined by former Sen. Bill Bradley as America's original sin, we should at least have a clear understanding of what affirmative action is - and isn't. Unfortunately, Obama and Clinton didn't contribute anything to expand that understanding.