A class-based society

I was recently struck by an article in the NYT discussing how colleges are trying to increase the representation of low-income students on their campuses. They are starting to decrease their emphasis on race-based quotas and increase the financial aid available to poor students. Race-based affirmative action quotas are not effective in enrolling the poor. "In their groundbreaking 1998 study of 28 selective universities, William Bowen, the former president of Princeton, and Derek Bok, now the interim president of Harvard, found that 86 percent of blacks who enrolled were middle or upper middle class."

If we help poor, smart students get a college education, we help people of color (80% of the poor) and we combat the increasing stratification of our society into haves and have-nots. If we simply blindly help people of color (affirmative action, often argued as a necessary reverse-prejudice), then we miss the critical class differences that divide the nation. Our society will keep on devolving into the club that has made it (black and whites both) and the club that has and will not make it (blacks and whites both).

We should help the smart poor people who deserve a chance at a good education. At colleges, a superficial redress based on skin color will not solve the continuing economic disparities caused by slavery, racism, and most critically, access to a decent education. Colleges, and the nation, should shift their affirmative action policies to favor the poor, and become color-blind again. It is class, not race, that truly divides our society.