In search of fairness: a better way - UCLA shows that class-based affirmative action won't lead to a 'whiteout'

Washington Monthly, June, 1998 by Richard D. Kahlenberg

A third possibility for the continuing test gap is cultural. As proponents of diversity themselves point out, race and ethnicity are rough proxies for culture, and cultural differences can be meaningful and significant. As a group, Asian-Americans are outperforming whites academically and constitute 38.3 percent of those admitted to Berkeley under the new race-blind admissions process, even though they make up only one ninth of the California population. Obviously, the fact that whites perform more poorly than Asian-Americans cannot be pinned on discrimination, and culture plays a significant role. This cultural factor is more mutable than genetics, but less responsive to public policy than discrimination.

In the end, then, a system of admissions that looks at talent plus obstacles seems to provide the best approximation of equal opportunity. On the means side, it is likely to comport with political, legal, and moral views of fairness. People accept the notion that the poor face obstacles, and are supportive of the progressive income tax but would likely balk at a higher marginal tax rate for whites than blacks. According to a December 1997 New York Times poll, Americans reject racial preferences 52-35 percent but in the event of their demise, support preferences for the poor by 53-37 percent. On the result side, class-based affirmative action will produce more racial diversity than straight reliance on tests and grades; less racial diversity than a reliance on racial preference; and more socioeconomic diversity than either approach. Rather than covering up an unjustified reliance on test scores (that ignores background unfairness) with cosmetic racial preferences, we should harness the desire for inclusion to ensure that the entire system is more just.

The experience at UCLA shows that while there is some tension between justice and ethnic proportionality, between genuine equal opportunity and equal group results, there is not an iron-clad contradiction, as the racial pessimists have been insisting. Fairness -- genuinely and aggressively sought after -- is compatible with, indeed helps secure, important measures of racial and economic diversity.

Richard D. Kahlenberg is a fellow at the Twentieth Century Fund and author of The Remedy: Class, Race, and Affirmative Action.