The New Republic

Of course, class-based affirmative action is what Bush pushed for with his Texas university admitance program. Not a dig on it....but just saying.

Can't you see Hillary Clinton comparing Obama to Bush if he did this?

- virginiacentrist

January 23, 2008 at 1:02pm

This would be a great move, because (i) it is the correct position (in my view) and (ii) it could give some weight to his claim that he can build a new majority.

- ralphnelle

January 23, 2008 at 1:48pm

Class-based affirmative action is wonderful in principle, but universities like Berkeley and UCLA that have experimented with it as a way of circumventing state proscriptions of race-based policies have found that it doesn't lead to a significant increase of minority admits, just more poor whites and Asians. It's frustrating because the idea had so much promise. Maybe there's a way to tinker with class-based AA so that minorities are more represented, but if Obama ran on it now he wouldn't have much evidence to back it up.

- primwallflow

January 23, 2008 at 2:11pm

"Maybe there's a way to tinker with class-based AA so that minorities are more represented, but if Obama ran on it now he wouldn't have much evidence to back it up."

And that has stopped a talented political candidate WHEN exactly?

-Ray

- ramboorider

January 23, 2008 at 2:15pm

"Maybe there's a way to tinker with class-based AA so that minorities are more represented, but if Obama ran on it now he wouldn't have much evidence to back it up."

And that has stopped a talented political candidate WHEN exactly?

-Ray

- ramboorider

January 23, 2008 at 2:15pm

Here's the link to the excellent New York Times Magazine piece that looks at the challenges of integrating class into traditionally race-based affirmative action programs:

www.nytimes.com/.../30affirmative-t.html

- primwallflow

January 23, 2008 at 2:25pm

Good article Prim, thanks for posting the link...

- Gully

January 23, 2008 at 3:09pm

Prim,

In regards your earlier comment about class based affirmative action, increasing the amount of poor white and asian students shouldn't be seen as a flaw, but as a feature.

Also, there are other possibilities for color-blind affirmative action than merely class.   For instance, attending a school with a history of violence or living in a high crime neighborhood obviously makes it harder for a child to learn.  I think crime based affirmative action would be just as easy to defend, and just as morally correct, as class based affirmative action.

The beauty of this approach, even more than the class based approach, is that people who think children in high crime neighborhoods are being given too large of an advantage are free to move their families to those neighborhoods to take advantage of the program.  If people actually did this, it would improve neighborhoods immensely.  I could see this being more advantageous to black communities than even race-based affirmative action.

- clifton

January 23, 2008 at 3:35pm

If the term "minority" has anything to do with bad schools, lack of parental direction and encouragement, geographical remoteness, lack of preparation for college, not sharing in economic prosperity, and the like, then "poor white" students are minority students.

- ironyroad

January 23, 2008 at 4:07pm

I agree that CBAA is politically good for Obama (and the advice about Latinoizing Clinton is just plain stupid), but it does ignore something big, which is that gatekeepers do discriminate based on skin color, often subtly in ways that they themselves (we ourselves) do not realize.  He can go for CBAA but has to deal with the race-based discrimination problem.  If he pulls out some Big Idea that deals with it in another way that does not require quotas or timetables or anything like that, then he hits a homerun.  Good luck with that one, Barack.

- stgla

January 23, 2008 at 4:29pm

Sorry to say s.t. positive about W, but my understanding of the Texas program that guarantees a spot in U-T to any HS grad in the top 10% of his class does indeed result in greater access to higher ed for both lower-income and AA students. Simple, fair, effective.

Also, TX has a program of * massive * redistribution of state education funds from wealthy districts to poor ones, aka the "Robin Hood" school funding program. The budget head of the Highland Park TX super-wealthy school district told me two years ago that the reason they had to dun the parents for so many contributions-- and cut back on foreign language instruction-- was that they had to transfer s.t. like $4,000 per student each year to another school in a piss-poor border town on the other side of the state.

Income-based aff action is coming. Embrace it.

Also, it would be nice if our side would get out front in favor of means-tested vouchers. It's a civil rights issue, as Giuliani and Spitzer both allege.

- teplukhin2you

January 23, 2008 at 5:50pm

"Simple, fair, effective."

So long as schools are segregated by race, of course. The entire premise of the 10% plan is that unqualified kids in low income schools will be underrepresented minorities who would not otherwise get in.

As usual, these efforts will only be successful so long as the suburbs that pay the freight for these schools through taxes tolerate them. That's why the UT 10% plan is so risky, as the student gets to pick the campus. UC's top 4% is better because the campuses don't have to accept the students unless they otherwise qualify. This has the negative effect of turning UC Riverside into a virtual dumping ground for the unqualified (just 25% of the students have SAT scores in math or verbal above 540), but at least it keeps the other campuses relatively unaffected. Of course, this is only good news if you think it's a bad idea to send near-illiterate kids (regardless of race) to public universities.

Also, the NY Times article on UCLA's "efforts" to increase minority enrollment casually mentions at the end that the campus almost certainly broke the law.

Class-based affirmative action will always penalize blacks and Hispanics because of test scores. The only way to ensure "underrepresented minority" enrollment is to ignore test scores and focus on grades, which can be rigged.

- jmkerr

January 23, 2008 at 6:30pm

I don't see much good coming from this idea.  Would Obama really steal a lot of Hillary voters with this approach?  Wouldn't it be seen as very cynical to hold out on this until after South Carolina where, assuming he wins, he will have done so with black support?  Isn't this a very touchy issue?  Isn't this very touchy issue largely irrelevant to the job?  In any event, I doubt very much Obama would come out strongly against race-based affirmative action.  The most he would say is that he's open to ideas like class-based affirmative action -- *that's* the right position, as far as I'm concerned.  But it would be something to see:  a black candidate for president pandering to *whites* on race.

- jhildner

January 23, 2008 at 6:41pm

"Would Obama really steal a lot of Hillary voters with this approach?"

Depends on how it's presented, when, where, to whom. He needs to weave a story about access for children of people who, you know, work hard and play by the rules,a nd then present it in a broader family-focused economic platform that focuses on the needs of _working families_ with _school-age children_. Tax credits left and right for moderate-income parents-- day care, college, means-tested vouchers, etc.

He could poach a large number of single moms who wait tables, work 2 or 3 jobs, etc and a lot of moderate-to-conservative  two-parent family voters of modest means-- AND defuse the increasingly obvious race-based strategy of the Clintons.

A good strategy for the primaries, and an even better one for the general.

- teplukhin2you

January 23, 2008 at 7:12pm

jhildner:

The idea might win over Hillary voters. I think quite a few people just agree with the idea on the merits. Plus, think of all the suburban households that just submitted their kids' college applications a couple of months ago. With higher education more competitive than ever, even liberal whites harbor animosity towards the hand full of well-off minorities they perceive as gaming the system (it'd be interesting to know what they think of bona fide poor minorities who get into Ivies, or, for that matter, the preferences given to athletes, legacies, and big donors. John Edwards I recall attacked these institutions about a year ago, though I haven't heard much about it since).

- primwallflow

January 23, 2008 at 7:17pm

My own sense of the AA question is that it has attracted controversy because, in part, it is incoherent. One hears from colleges or firms or scholarship programs attracting applications from, variously: "Underprivileged," "underrepresented," or "Minority" applicants, along with many other clarifying adjectives.

They're caught up in their own PC doublespeak. Each one of those leads to perverse outcomes. Is a white, gay, wealthy person a "minority?" Is an Asian a "minority?"  Are the Scions of Bill Cosby "Underrepresented?"

As someone, a white person, who came from a family of very little means, I can tell you that, in courts and law firms (as in other professions, I'm sure), a proletarian background is certainly "underrepresented."

The AA system of using race as a proxy for class--which is what is seems that we're doing now--can't go on, for the reasons mentioned above. But, if we're going to promote race for racial diversity's sake ALONE, as Noam suggested, then we need to be clear about that.

- ryanmacd

January 23, 2008 at 9:17pm

Responding to ryan's point, I have a lot of sympathy to that view, but, I also hear Noam's point -- that racial divisions remain in this country and that they are racial, and not actually, class divisions, and that paying attention to race, i.e., taking "affirmative action" to integrate the professional class and the corporate world, is not, let's say, a bad goal if you want to address those lingering and potent racial divisions.  Class-based affirmative action, at least as a panacea, looks at the issue as one of purely opportunity compensation, which doesn't, I think, capture the whole of the issue, and then assumes that blacks or other minorities don't actually face any prejudice on that basis on any sort of significant scale, which I find hard to buy.  The main work, I agree, has to be done by individuals, their families, and their communities, and I approve of that sort of talk, but I don't view race-based affirmative action as simply a proxy for class-based affirmative action, and, while open to the idea of class-based affirmative action, I'm not so quick to say well, Here's the answer, we can stop paying attention to race now.  Good guys won; time to move on.  That seems a little too easy.

The president doesn't have much to do with this, practically speaking, except that he nominates judges.  On that score, I would vigorously maintain the position that affirmative action, while we may disagree about whether it's good policy, or even fair, is constitutional, and the courts shouldn't be taking it off the table.  (Private institutions, meanwhile, could always do whatever they wanted.)  State schools and some state and local agencies (police forces is a common one) are mainly where these battles are fought.  I'm inclined to let them be in charge.  I don't see the need for a uniform national policy on this.

- jhildner

January 23, 2008 at 10:20pm

p.s.  ryan, you're probably right about the fanciest law firms, and I don't know where you practice (assuming you're a lawyer), but in my experience, it seems that there a lot of lawyers and judges who come from the neighborhoods -- ethnic enclaves of relatively modest means.  These are areas that have historically benefited, by the way, from old-fashioned white working-class affirmative action -- political patronage networks, machines.

- jhildner

January 23, 2008 at 11:02pm

You're losing the focus here people, affirmative action is another one of those divisive nonissues that the Republicans like to push, here's what we need to be paying attention to.

Obama's Hopemongering

www.streetprophets.com/.../24365

[In Clinton's and Obama's words I saw a fundamental difference laid bare: she is the better candidate at the current scorched-earth politics of personal destruction, while he wants to transform our worldview from fear to hope. Sure, that's been the essential text to the campaign, but it's one I saw anew Monday evening. Obama seeks a transformative posture that the Clinton campaign has ridiculed from Day One as naive, and indeed Hillary Clinton a few weeks ago blasted Obama for "raising false hopes."]

[It's one thing to question whether Obama offers the right model to get us there. That's a fair question. It's another to dismiss it out of hand, to mock such a goal as naive and childlike, and to seek to perpetuate the current state of affairs...]

- AaronBBrown

January 24, 2008 at 7:45am

I don't think Obama needs to attack affirmative action or seek a Souljah moment.  He just needs to drill Hillary good on all her negatives - just really come at her hard for being divisive and secretive and lacking in the necessary attributes of character necessary in a President.  Attack her voting record and her public statements and just go after her till all we can see is her negatives, glowing radioactive.  

She has it coming.

Neil

- purcellneil

January 24, 2008 at 12:39pm

"drill Hillary good"?

- teplukhin2you

January 24, 2008 at 4:59pm

There has been class-based affirmative action for many, many years.  It's called "scholarships".

I think most people would support class-based assistance if it also biased in favor of merit and initiative.  

In other words, first help people who have demonstrated they're trying to help themselves.  That's the most efficient kind of help because it has the best chance of success.

- ChanRobt

January 24, 2008 at 5:02pm