Senator Obama claims to be the candidate who transcends old ways of thinking about race. If that were really true, he would embrace genuine equality, like clear majorities of American voters have, even in relatively liberal states such as California, Michigan, and Washington.

In those states, voters have resoundingly passed initiatives that require their state governments not to engage in discrimination on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, education, or contracting.

Those victories for race-neutral practices are a rebuke to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Grutter v. Bollinger in 2003, wherein a 5-4 majority of the Court held that the purported need for “diversity” (racial, not intellectual) could justify racial preferences in college admissions for another 25 years.

When the case was decided, racial preferences had already been the de facto practice at most American colleges for 25 years. This was largely on the strength of Justice Powell’s decision in the celebrated Bakke case of 1978, where he held essentially the same thing that the Grutter majority later endorsed.

The preferences, of course, are only for non-white applicants. Not quotas, mind you — just “preferences.” The Supreme Court allows but does not require such preferences. The states that have passed civil rights initiatives now explicitly forbid them.

The dissenters in Grutter — Justices Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist, and Kennedy, expressed dismay at the “unprecedented” deference the Court showed to the University of Michigan Law School in its effort to pursue proportional racial admissions. Justices Scalia and Thomas wrote separately to deride the university’s assertion that the “educational benefits” of socialization and good citizenship can be achieved by racial discrimination in admissions.

They further agreed that “blacks can achieve in every avenue of American life without the meddling of university administrators” and that those administrators were making no real effort to achieve a class that was capable of performing well.

Instead, they were concentrating their efforts on assembling a class that “looks right.” Justice Thomas was unequivocal in saying that the equal protection clause, if it does anything, prohibits classifications based on race.

Does Mr. Obama reject the majority’s decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, and embrace the dissenters’ position? On the contrary, he pledged his support for the majority decision when it was issued, and attacked the Bush administration for its support of race-neutral equality.

Will Mr. Obama pledge to appoint justices like those who dissented in the case? On the contrary, he has said he will do just the opposite, venting his spleen particularly on Justice Thomas. At last month’s Saddleback forum, Mr. Obama not only pointed out his profound dislike of Justice Thomas’s jurisprudence, but said he was too weak a jurist and legal thinker even to be nominated for the Court.

Mr. Obama has said he will appoint judges with “empathy” for the poor, African-Americans, gays, the disabled, and the aged. This is transparent code for the fact that he will, at a minimum, continue the judicial status quo on affirmative action. More likely, he will seek to appoint even more left-leaning judges whose approach to their work has little to do with strict constitutional interpretation and more to do with empathizing with preferred constituencies, while expanding preferences for them.

Has Mr. Obama supported the efforts of ordinary citizens who have worked assiduously to undo decades of “affirmative action” mischief created largely by courts? On the contrary, during the campaign for the Michigan initiative in 2006, he urged residents to vote “no.”

Mr. Obama has made his position on racial preferences abundantly clear. He has consistently failed to embrace the unequivocal language of the Declaration of Independence, that “all men are created equal,” or the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, that no state shall deprive any person within its jurisdiction of “the equal protection of the laws,” or the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin … be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

In his failure to oppose racial preferences, Mr. Obama literally pays only lip service to the concerns he expressed in his Philadelphia speech. There, he acknowledged that legitimate “anger” exists within the “white community” over affirmative action preferences.

All the usual suspects have come out against voter initiatives designed to give full meaning to the promise of equality. In the Michigan case, they included Detroit’s mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, as well as Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and the NAACP.

Mr. Obama needs to distance himself from these vehement critics of equal treatment. Only when he becomes courageous enough and morally serious enough to do that will he be in a strong position to promise change we can believe in.

Mr. Watson holds the Philip M. McKenna Chair in American and Western Political Thought at Saint Vincent College in Pennsylvania. His next book is “Living Constitution, Dying Faith: Progressivism and the New Science of Jurisprudence.”