Class Conflict

The debate over class-based affirmative action

This summer, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard a case with profound implications for college students and their universities. The case of Fisher v. Texas charges that the University of Texas at Austin unconstitutionally used race as a factor in determining admissions. The case, which may reach the Supreme Court in its next term, has refocused national attention on how racial criteria should factor into admissions decisions.
As race-based affirmative action comes under fire, more schools may consider adopting class-based standards, which proponents say can ensure a diverse class without resorting to racial discrimination. This alternative to race-based admissions is promising but imperfect; considerations of race and class pose different challenges to America’s universities. Unless the criteria for class-based affirmative action take into account complex social factors, e.g. school-district poverty levels, in defining concepts like “class,” the system will not yield the same degree of racial diversity and minority representation as do race-based admissions policies.
Quality vs. Justice?
Some argue that the diversity guaranteed by race-based affirmative action comes only at the expense of the quality of the students. George Leef, director of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, told the HPR that “the tendency” of all affirmative action policies “is to dumb down the class.” Leef believes this applies equally to class-based policies, which he said are likely to “blend in some students who are less capable than others.”
But supporters of class-based affirmative action point to the initiative’s ability to compensate for economic inequality, while seemingly avoiding the pitfalls of race-based preferences. Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, told the HPR that class-based affirmative action helps students overcome “the biggest disadvantages they face today,” which are “socioeconomic in nature.”
Kahlenberg explained that research has “found that the most economically disadvantaged student is expected to score 399 SAT points lower than the most socioeconomically advantaged student.” Kahlenberg argues that class-based affirmative action could compensate for the academic obstacles faced by poorer students. According to a recent study by the Century Foundation, “economically disadvantaged” students represent only 10 percent of the student body at 146 top universities, but could rise to 38 percent if class-based preferences are implemented.
Race or Class?
One major debate among supporters of affirmative action deals with whether class- based and race-based affirmative action plans can coexist. Kahlenberg argued that there would be little reason to maintain race-based programs in addition to class-based ones. “The notion of socioeconomic or class-based affirmative action is that you would provide a leg up to poor or working-class African Americans and Latinos, as well as whites,” he said. “The reason to continue to use race would really be to benefit more advantaged or upper-middle-class students of color, and to my mind that’s a hard sell.”
But, according to Julian Bond, the former chairman of the NAACP and a history professor at the University of Virginia, race-based and class- based affirmative action are not incompatible. Bond told the HPR that he supports both race- and class-based affirmative action, and that one “is not a substitute” for the other. “If you had only class-based affirmative action, you would have college classes that would be overwhelmingly white,” he said. In Bond’s view, class-based affirmative action alone cannot guarantee effective minority representation, and fails to compensate for past injustices and current prejudices toward African Americans and other racial minorities.
Achieving True Diversity
Nevertheless, some believe that a well-implemented class-based affirmative action plan may actually better achieve the goal of diversity on campus. Richard Sander, a UCLA law professor, told the HPR that socioeconomic diversity could improve the classroom experience by more subtly exposing students to different perspectives. On this metric, race-based affirmative action falls short, Sander said. “Students will often self-segregate, where they go off searching for their identity. Diversity becomes performance art instead of actual intellectual exchange,” he told the HPR.
Class-based affirmative action is not subject to the same objection, according to Sander. “Class-based diversity… is more invisible,” he said. “People blend in more, so diversity comes more naturally. Students then are more apt to pursue different types of intellectual diversity.” Sander believes that class-based affirmative action mixes students together in less noticeable and potentially less stigmatizing ways, and may improve intellectual discourse in ways that race-based affirmative action cannot.
Class in Effect

The major divide between proponents of race- and class-based affirmative action stems from a disagreement about the effects that class-based strategies will have on minority representation. For Bond, “a class-based system alone” would not “touch the situation of racial minorities,” likely resulting in major declines in minority representation at colleges across the country. But Kahlenberg contends that the formula used to determine an applicant’s “class” could take into account factors that would guarantee relatively strong minority acceptance rates. “If a university simply looks at income as its measure of socioeconomic advantage, then you would see a drop in minority enrollment, but if the university instead uses a sophisticated definition of economic status, then you’re likely to see greater numbers of African Americans and Latinos being admitted,” Kahlenberg explained. Such a metric might include factors like neighborhood wealth and school-district poverty levels.
The experience of the UCLA School of Law supports Kahlenberg’s claim. The school’s class-based affirmative action program took into account such factors as parents’ education levels, occupations, income, and wealth, as well as the number of hours the student worked each week during college. This program resulted in significant increases in the percentage of African American, Latino, and Asian applicants admitted to the school. This suggests that the formula used for measuring “class” has significant implications for Bond’s fears about the underrepresentation of minorities in class-based affirmative action systems.
Fisher-ing for the Future
As Fisher v. Texas makes its way through the federal courts, colleges across the nation will watch closely to determine the case’s impact on their admissions policies. As the disagreements between Kahlenberg and Bond demonstrate, universities are challenged to seek both socioeconomic and racial diversity. Their success depends on finding formulas that can ensure greater socioeconomic diversity without sacrificing minority representation. The development of such formulas, coupled with the positive results obtained at schools like UCLA that have begun to use class-based programs, may well bring some form of class-based affirmative action closer to implementation at America’s top universities.

Peter Bozzo ‘12 is a Staff Writer and Eric Smith ‘13 is a Contributing Writer.
Photo Credit: Flickr (Nil)