December 9, 2024

Economix Blog: The Leading Liberal Against Affirmative Action

My Capital Ideas column this week looks at liberals who would see some upsides if the Supreme Court made substantial changes to affirmative-action programs. The justices heard arguments in such a case in October — Fisher v. the University of Texas — and are expected to issue their decision between March 18 and late June.

Perhaps the most prominent self-described progressive with doubts about the current version of affirmative action is Richard D. Kahlenberg, of the Century Foundation. Mr. Kahlenberg argues that a race-focused version of affirmative action can be unfair, is inconsistent with many of the program’s original goals and has lost the support of the public. Today’s affirmative action, he says, helps perpetuate privilege, by helping to fill elite-college campuses with an ethnically diverse mix of affluent students.

In its place, he has suggested that selective public and private colleges adopt a class-based affirmative action. Done right — by taking into account not only household income but also wealth, family status and geographic concentration of poverty — such a program could enroll similar numbers of minority students as the current version, Mr. Kahlenberg says.

As he writes:

Recruiting fairly privileged students of color is far less expensive than including low-income and working-class kids of all races. While higher education’s vigorous defense of affirmative action on one level represents a sincere desire for greater racial equality, it has another less virtuous side to it, as racial preferences avoid the hard work of addressing deeply rooted inequalities and instead provide what Stephen Carter has called “racial justice on the cheap.”

Mr. Kahlenberg does not question the continued presence of racism. Its existence is one reason that some other higher-education experts who share some of Mr. Kahlenberg’s views would rather see colleges move toward a combination of race- and class-based affirmative action.

When I asked him if he agreed, he said he had spent a long time thinking about that issue and ultimately decided he favored only class-based preferences. They can be structured in a way to recruit a racially diverse class, he believes — and college administrators have come to care so much more about racial diversity than about economic diversity that the two programs would not coexist easily. “My reluctant conclusion is that the only way to get universities to focus on class is if they can’t first use race,” he said.

Why do they care less about class? That’s a complex question that deserves a separate blog post. My guess is that the answer is a combination of a sincere focus on overcoming centuries of racial discrimination; a desire to save money on financial aid; a discomfort with class as a subject that permeates much of American society; and a lingering gentility on some elite university campuses.

For a different from than Mr. Kahlenberg’s, you can read the legal brief filed by the University of Texas or several other briefs — listed under “Briefs in Support of Respondent” — filed by universities, civil-rights groups and others.

Whether you agree with Mr. Kahlenberg’s solutions, his report, “A Better Affirmative Action,” provides a detailed overview of the program, from Martin Luther King Jr. to today. The final section, written by Halley Potter, also of the Century Foundation, profiles several states that have banned race-based affirmative action and looks at how universities have responded.

Those states may offer a preview of what will happen if the Supreme Court rules against the University of Texas.

Article source: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/09/the-leading-liberal-against-affirmative-action/?partner=rss&emc=rss