Racial diversity without racial preferences: the growing case for class-based affirmative action in college admissions.

• Author: Kahlenberg, Richard D.
• Position: Book review

Race, Class, and Affirmative Action

by Sigal Alon

Russell Sage Foundation, 348 pp.

Admission to a selective college, we can probably all agree, should be fair, because the stakes are high and the public support we provide elite colleges is incredibly generous. The twelve universities that educate roughly half of America's government and corporate leaders (and serve less than 1 percent of undergraduates) receive public subsidies of up to $105,000 per pupil, on the grounds that nonprofit universities serve the public interest. College admissions are laden with unfair preferences for the children of alumni, for athletes in a variety of sports, and for black and Latino students, most of whom also come from middle- or upper-class backgrounds. The one group that generally receives no preference? Economically disadvantaged students of all races. That will almost certainly change if the Supreme Court curtails the use of racial preferences in deciding Fisher v. University of Texas II, in which a white student, Abigail Fisher, has challenged the use of race in admissions. In states where racial preferences have been banned (usually by voter initiative), states and universities have responded by vigorously recruiting, and boosting financial aid to, less-advantaged kids. Community college students are encouraged to transfer, and colleges downplay standardized test results, and/or eliminate preferences for the generally wealthy children of alumni.

The Fisher case will likely turn on an empirical question: whether the Supreme Court believes that universities can achieve racial diversity by alternative means. The death of Justice Antonin Scalia, an almost certain vote against racial preferences, might have been balanced out by Justice Elena Kagan, a supporter of preferences. But she has recused herself from the case. Justice Anthony Kennedy, typically the swing vote, likes racial diversity but dislikes policies that favor students based on skin color or surname. When the Fisher case first came before the Supreme Court, in 2013, Kennedy wrote that diversity is a compelling interest but that universities bear "the ultimate burden of demonstrating, before turning to racial classifications, that available, workable race-neutral alternatives do not suffice."

Into this fray jumps Sigal Alon, a sociologist and anthropologist at Tel Aviv University, with her new book, Race, Class, and Affirmative Action. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Alon claimed to have...