Moving from Race-Based to Class-Based Affirmative Action

In this New York Times column, David Brooks says the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision (Fisher v. University of Texas) is “another small signal that the era of explicitly race-based affirmative action is coming to an end.” Why? Brooks believes it’s because three things have changed:

• Economic inequality is now more important than race as a source of disadvantage. A recent study found that fifty years ago, the black/white test-score gap was twice as large as the rich/poor gap. Now the opposite is true: the income gap is almost twice as large as the race gap. 

• The ethnic makeup of the U.S. is now a mosaic of ethnic and racial groups from all over the world, with varying degrees of advantage and disadvantage. 

• We now have more data on college applicants and can base admissions decisions on more than simple SAT scores and grade-point averages. 

The question we should be asking, says Brooks, is what challenges a college applicant has faced – his or her speed of ascent. “A student who’s risen from an economic catastrophe to achieve a B-plus average has more speed of ascent than the child of law professors who has an A average,” he says. “The first student may be more expensive to teach. She may not write as many big alumni checks. But she’ll reflect more credit on her school and society.” 

“Speed of Ascent” by David Brooks in The New York Times, June 25, 2013 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/opinion/brooks-speed-of-ascent.ht... 

From the Marshall Memo #492