Such class-based programs would represent a return to the original vision of affirmative action. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson said, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains, and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of the race and then say, ‘You are free to compete will all the others’ and still say that you have been completely fair.” But as contemporaneous news accounts noted, Johnson “did not mention such specific remedies as job quotas or preferential hiring, which some civil rights leaders have advocated,” and, instead, proposed a series of economic programs that would disproportionately benefit black citizens.
Addressing class inequality in university admissions could be costly and could open uncomfortable conversations about preferential treatment for the children of alumni, who are disproportionately well-off. Ironically, a conservative Supreme Court decision curtailing the use of race in admissions could help move our country toward a more progressive version of affirmative action, one that gets at root issues of class inequality that higher education would rather avoid.
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