cover image Remedy: Class, Race, and Affirmative Action

Remedy: Class, Race, and Affirmative Action

Richard D. Kahlenberg, Ricahrd D. Kahlenberg. Basic Books, $25 (368pp) ISBN 978-0-465-09823-1

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. (June)