Liberals always say that affirmative action is not about quotas, it’s about diversity. But let some racial group’s numbers get out of whack and you’ll see how quick “diversity” becomes “racial quota.” That happened at a Michelle Obama rally at Carnegie Mellon University:

While the crowd was indeed diverse, some students at the event questioned the practices of Mrs. Obama’s event coordinators, who handpicked the crowd sitting behind Mrs. Obama. The Tartan’s correspondents observed one event coordinator say to another, “Get me more white people, we need more white people.” To an Asian girl sitting in the back row, one coordinator said, “We’re moving you, sorry. It’s going to look so pretty, though.”

“I didn’t know they would say, ‘We need a white person here,’ ” said attendee and senior psychology major Shayna Watson, who sat in the crowd behind Mrs. Obama. “I understood they would want a show of diversity, but to pick up people and to reseat them, I didn’t know it would be so outright.”

When I worked in newspapers, publishers were always trying to deny that affirmative action in the newsroom devolved into quotas, even as they would hold positions open for months looking for a person of the right qualifications and the right pigment to hire for the opening, and send around monthly diversity reports showing each department’s percentage of minorities.