Affirmative action for the deserving only

Did you see Orlando Patterson's bizarre argument in the Sunday NYT (op-ed)? Affirmative action should be available only for "African-Americans, Native Americans and most Latinos" (which ones?) because they (and not later immigrants) deserve it. I guess he thinks that Chinese railroad workers and Japanese WW II internees, among others, never suffered serious discrimination. Patterson writes in Harvard-ese, which is a language designed to lull you into thinking it maybe makes sense until the incantation takes effect. He seems to think of himself as a Wise Elder for African American politicos, but I doubt that they are listening.