The Future of Affirmative Action / Class Matters скачать в хорошем качестве

The Future of Affirmative Action / Class Matters

Join Richard Kahlenberg, Jason Riley, Justin Driver, and Nicholas Lemann as they discuss three possible futures for affirmative action in college admissions: trying to preserve as much racial affirmative action as is legally possible, as Driver suggests; eliminating affirmative action altogether, as Riley suggests; or forging a middle path which provides a leg up to low-income and working-class students of all races, as Kahlenberg argues. For decades America’s colleges and universities have been working to increase racial diversity. But they have been using the wrong approach, Richard Kahlenberg argues in his highly personal and deeply researched book, Class Matters: The Fight to Get Beyond Race Preferences, Reduce Inequality, and Build Real Diversity at America’s Colleges. Kahlenberg makes the definitive case that class disadvantage, rather than race, should be the determining factor for how a broader array of people “get in.” While elite universities claim to be on the side of social justice, the dirty secret of higher education is that the perennial focus on racial diversity has provided cover for an admissions system that mostly benefits the wealthy and shuts out talented working-class students. By fixing the class bias in college admissions we can begin to rectify America’s skyrocketing economic inequality and class antagonism, giving more people a better place at the table as they move through life and more opportunity to “swim in the river of power.” Kahlenberg has long worked with prominent civil rights leaders on housing and school integration. But his recognition of class inequality in American higher education led to his making a controversial decision to go over to the “other side” and provide research and testimony in cases that helped lead to the controversial Supreme Court decision of 2023 that ended racial preferences. That conservative ruling could, Kahlenberg shows, paradoxically have a progressive policy outcome by cutting a new path for economic and racial diversity alike – and greater fairness. Justin Driver offers a second perspective in his book, “The Fall of Affirmative Action: Race, the Supreme Court, and the Future of Higher Education.” For decades, affirmative action reshaped not just American higher education but the broader society, opening doors that had been closed for centuries and transforming who entered the pathways to power. But the Supreme Court in 2023 killed affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, a decision hailed by the right as a triumph of conservative colorblindness and decried by the left as requiring the end of racial equity. Both sides, Yale Law School professor Justin Driver contends, are wrong. Perversely, even when viewed through a conservative lens, the Court’s decision ushers in a less desirable admissions regime. The post-SFFA model places a new premium on students of color voicing their racial trauma in elaborate application essays, entrenching the very racial victimization and essentialism that conservatives purport to loathe. The Trump Administration’s assault on higher education has been fueled by distorted readings of SFFA, further clouding the opinion’s already opaque meaning. But SFFA, properly understood, leaves universities significant legal room to combat Trump’s anti-D.E.I. onslaught by adopting innovative policies that foster diversity—including preferences for descendants of slavery, members of tribes, and applicants from blighted communities. Far from a mere eulogy, The Fall of Affirmative Action provides a blueprint for the future—a rallying cry for citizens to forge new paths to inclusion and push back against the notion that racial equity is doomed. The death of affirmative action, Driver insists, need not mean the death of opportunity. Jason Riley offers yet another view in The Affirmative Action Myth: Why Blacks Don't Need Racial Preferences to Succeed. After the Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that the use of race in college admissions was unconstitutional, many predicted that the black middle class was doomed. One byproduct of a half century of affirmative action is that it has given people the impression that blacks can’t advance without special treatment. In his book, Jason L. Riley details the neglected history of black achievement without government intervention. Using empirical data, Riley shows how black families lifted themselves out of poverty prior to the racial preference policies of the 1960s and 1970s. Black incomes, homeownership, and educational attainment were all on the rise in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century and began to stagnate only after affirmative action became the law of the land, tainting black achievement with suspicions of unfair advantage. Countering thinkers who blame white supremacy and systemic racism for today’s racial gaps, Riley offers a more optimistic story of black success without racial favoritism. Nicholas Lemann will moderate the discussion.