Class, not race.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: Tilting at windmills - Affirmative action - Brief article

Here's what I hope the Supreme Court decides in the affirmative action case it's now considering: affirmative action should be based on economic status, instead of race. It doesn't make sense for an upper-middle-class black student from an educated family to get a 310-point increase in his SAT score that elite colleges now give on the basis of race, according to a study by Princeton sociologist Thomas J. Espenshade, while a lower-middle-class white student gains no such preference.

One realistic basis for my hope that I learned from David Leonhardt of the New York...