The Remedy: Class, Race, And Affirmative Action

by Richard D Kahlenberg

Overview

In this provocative and paradigm-shifting book, Richard D. Kahlenberg argues that affirmative action programs ought to be based not on race but on class. America's exclusive focus on race in determining how to allocate economic and educational opportunities has served only to undermine the moral legitimacy of affirmative action, the results clearly visible in the growing public sentiment to abolish such programs.Kahlenberg shows that it is time to return to affirmative action's roots, so that it works to the benefit of the truly disadvantaged, regardless of race. In a sweeping and damning analysis, Kahlenberg examines how the rationale for affirmative action has moved inexorably away from its original commitment to remedy past discrimination and instead has become a means to achieve racial diversity, even if that means giving preference to upper-middle-class blacks over poor whites. He outlines how a class-based system of affirmative action would work, why all Americans should embrace it, and how the African-American community in particular would continue to reap the benefits it needs without engendering resentment among whites.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465098248
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	05/16/1997
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.40(d)
Lexile:	1810L (what's this?)

About the Author

Richard D. Kahlenberg, a fellow of the Center for National Policy, has been a visiting associate professor of law at George Washington University and a legislative assistant to Senator Charles S. Robb of Virginia.

Editorial Reviews

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.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Kahlenberg, a former law professor and author of Broken Contract: A Memoir of Harvard Law School (LJ 1/92), argues that affirmative action "should be revamped so that preferences in education, in employment, and in government contracting are provided on the basis of class, not race or gender." Providing a historic overview of events that culminated in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, he asserts that this act, however, was subverted into race-based quota programs and, most recently, into so-called diversity programs, even though there was no original intent by its principal architects to equate affirmative action with racial preferences. Martin Luther King, in fact, called for a broad-based "Economic Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged," and Robert F. Kennedy campaigned in 1968 for anti-poverty programs based on economic circumstance rather than race. Notwithstanding an unabashedly liberal bias, Kahlenberg argues persuasively for affirmative action programs based exclusively on class, which would provide all poor Americans with equal opportunity. A timely and provocative topic; recommended for academic as well as large public libraries. --Jo McClamroch, Xavier Univ. Lib., Cincinnati

Library Journal

A workmanlike case for class-based affirmative action that offers few solutions to the program's many problematic aspects. Race-based affirmative action is an easy target lately, and Kahlenberg (who formerly taught law at George Washington Univ.) does a decent job of shooting it down. He rates its success and failure on a number of counts: Has it, for instance, provided genuine equality of opportunity? Has it advanced us toward the long-term goal of a color-blind society? According to Kahlenberg, race-based affirmative action has achieved middling to failing grades in these and other measures of its effectiveness. What he proposes in its stead is that we continue to give preference to the disadvantaged, but that we define disadvantage in purely socioeconomic terms. This would be an answer to the oft-raised question, Why should a wealthy African-American be given preference over a poor white? At the same time, argues Kahlenberg, class-based affirmative action would continue to be advantageous to blacks, who make up a disproportionately large segment of America's poor. But while his proposal would solve one problem of the present system, Kahlenberg inadequately laddresses other questions. For example, at what point is it too late to create equal opportunity for an individual? Can past wrongs be remedied by placing people in situations that are too difficult for them to handle? And who's going to pay for all this? Kahlenberg wants private universities to take less qualified candidates, offer them remedial and summer courses to catch them up, and have the government foot the bill for their tuition, etc. But wouldn't the money would be better spent in the public school system, so thatpoorer students wouldn't be so far behind in the first place? Not likely to make any converts; in fact, the author's failure to provide reasonable answers to the many questions he raises may push a few fence-sitters over to the other side.

Kirkus Reviews