Remedy: Class, Race, and Affirmative Action

Arguably, this is the most thorough effort so far to support preferences based on class, rather than race or sex, when decisions are made in university admissions or entry-level hiring. In dry but lucid style (and in lengthy endnotes), Kahlenberg (Broken Contract: A Memoir of Harvard Law School) engages most of the arguments in the affirmative action debate. He considers his remedy a principled response to affirmative action opponents who deny the value of diversity, and to proponents who ""raise diversity to a value above justice."" Current affirmative action, he argues, neither provides genuine equal opportunity-it helps the middle class more than the poor-nor contributes to long-run color blindness and social integration. He provides sober analysis of the mechanics of measuring class-based disadvantage and suggests it can be used to maintain a significant minority presence in universities. Kahlenberg's solution may discount the importance of affirmative action beyond entry-level hiring, as well as the role race-based affirmative action can play in combating racial stigma. But his book, hearkening back to the promise of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, reminds us that class-based coalitions may be the way to seek a more just America. (June)