Efforts to increase the number of minority faculty in predominantly white colleges and universities in the United States have been less successful than is commonly supposed. Significant barriers to minority access and retention remain. This paper examines the supply of, and demand for, minority faculty, stressing the limiting role of institutionalized values—merit and autonomy. I look at difficulties in affirmative action, the major proposed remedy to problems of supply and demand, and the problems of post-compliance discrimination. Racial inequality in academic careers is likely to persist as long as these barriers, and the conditions which produce them, remain unchanged.