Place, Not Race: A New Vision of Opportunity in America
Sheryll Cashin
Language: English
Pages: 176
ISBN: 0807080403
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
From a nationally recognized expert, a fresh and original argument for bettering affirmative action
Race-based affirmative action had been declining as a factor in university admissions even before the recent spate of related cases arrived at the Supreme Court. Since Ward Connerly kickstarted a state-by-state political mobilization against affirmative action in the mid-1990s, the percentage of four-year public colleges that consider racial or ethnic status in admissions has fallen from 60 percent to 35 percent. Only 45 percent of private colleges still explicitly consider race, with elite schools more likely to do so, although they too have retreated.
For law professor and civil rights activist Sheryll Cashin, this isn’t entirely bad news, because as she argues, affirmative action as currently practiced does little to help disadvantaged people. The truly disadvantaged—black and brown children trapped in high-poverty environs—are not getting the quality schooling they need in part because backlash and wedge politics undermine any possibility for common-sense public policies. Using place instead of race in diversity programming, she writes, will better amend the structural disadvantages endured by many children of color, while enhancing the possibility that we might one day move past the racial resentment that affirmative action engenders.
In Place, Not Race, Cashin reimagines affirmative action and champions place-based policies, arguing that college applicants who have thrived despite exposure to neighborhood or school poverty are deserving of special consideration. Those blessed to have come of age in poverty-free havens are not. Sixty years since the historic decision, we’re undoubtedly far from meeting the promise of Brown v. Board of Education, but Cashin offers a new framework for true inclusion for the millions of children who live separate and unequal lives. Her proposals include making standardized tests optional, replacing merit-based financial aid with need-based financial aid, and recruiting high-achieving students from overlooked places, among other steps that encourage cross-racial alliances and social mobility.
A call for action toward the long overdue promise of equality, Place, Not Race persuasively shows how the social costs of racial preferences actually outweigh any of the marginal benefits when effective race-neutral alternatives are available.
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concentrate poverty in schools but on trying to turn high-poverty schools around. That strategy has failed.58 To be fair, so has every federal program of the last half-century that tried to overcome concentrated poverty with additional resources.59 Only one percent of high-poverty schools succeed. Those rare outliers that do produce enviable outcomes benefit from conditions that are not replicable for all high-poverty schools.60 Geoffrey Canada’s much-touted Harlem Children’s Zone, which provides
traditional recruitment patterns explain why selective private schools fall short in their representation of low-income, high-ability students. They focus on parts of the country with small numbers of low-income achievers and neglect regions with a lot more of them. Midwest and mountain states produce 21.2 percent of low-income high achievers nationwide, while New England is home to only 3.5 percent of them.10 Place influences not just where colleges choose to recruit but also where achievers
colleges grant merit aid to higher percentages of their students than those who receive need-based aid. The US Department of Education’s most recent analysis of the trend is revealing. In 1995–96, 43 percent of students at private, nonprofit colleges and universities received need-based grants. Back then, only 24 percent received merit aid. By 2007–08, only 42 percent of students received need-based aid while 44 percent received merit aid.36 Admissions directors at moderately selective schools
Press, October 29, 2012, http://surveys.ap.org/data%5CGfK%5CAP_Racial_Attitudes_Topline_09182012.pdf. 35. See Cashin, “Democracy, Race, and Multiculturalism in the Twenty-First Century,” 80–84, which explains the politics of white supremacy in the states of the former confederacy, citing sources. 36. Despite protests to the contrary, there is some evidence to suggest that the Tea Party–led backlash against Obama had racial overtones. See David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam, “Crashing the Tea
Recommendations and Observations,” University of California, Undergraduate Diversity Work Team, September 2007, http://diversity.universityofcalifornia.edu/documents/07-diversity_report.pdf. 38. Transcript of Oral Argument at 42–43, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, 132 S. Ct. 1536 (2012) (No. 11–345). 39. Ibid., 43. 40. Randall Kennedy, For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law (New York: Pantheon, 2013), 86 (“the power, wealth, connections, and prestige that accrue to
