The Deserving Poor, the Undeserving Poor, and Class-based Affirmative Action

• Citation: Vol. 66 No. 5
• Publication year: 2017

The Deserving Poor, the Undeserving Poor, and Class-Based Affirmative Action

Khiara M. Bridges

THE DESERVING POOR, THE UNDESERVING POOR, AND CLASS-BASED AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Khiara M. Bridges^*

Abstract

This Article is a critique of class-based affirmative action. It begins by observing that many professed politically conservative individuals have championed class-based affirmative action. However, it observes that political conservatism is not typically identified as an ideology that generally approves of improving the poor's well-being through the means that class-based affirmative action employs—that is, through redistributing wealth by taking wealth from a wealthy individual and giving it directly to a poor person. This is precisely what class-based affirmative action does: it takes a seat in an incoming class (a species of wealth) from a wealthy individual and gives it directly to a poor person. This Article attempts to reconcile this apparent contradiction. Interestingly, engaging in this project of reconciliation reveals very little about conservatism, but a lot about class-based affirmative action. This Article proposes that class-based affirmative action enjoys widespread support from people across the political spectrum because it is imagined to benefit the "deserving poor." Unlike the "undeserving poor," the "deserving poor" are those who cannot be blamed for their poverty; their impoverishment is not due to individual behavioral or character flaws, but rather to structural or macro forces well outside of an individual's control. Class-based affirmative action enjoys bipartisan political popularity because it is imagined to benefit these respectable poor people—folks who are deserving of a "leg up" in the admissions competition and deserving of programs designed to assist them, even if those programs involve a direct transfer of wealth from the wealthy to the poor. However, that political conservatives and liberals alike currently imagine class-based affirmative action to benefit the deserving poor is a reason for alarm. Alarm bells should ring because, throughout history, the categories of the deserving and undeserving poor have been racialized—and, frequently,

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racist. To be precise, it has been difficult for people of color—black people, particularly—to access the ranks of the deserving poor. If history is a teacher, then we might expect that it will be difficult for society to continue to imagine that the beneficiaries of class-based affirmative action are the deserving poor if these class-conscious programs disproportionately benefit racial minorities. Indeed, if history is a teacher, then class-based affirmative action will lose its popularity if poor racial minorities—who have figured within the cultural imaginary as the embodiment of undeservingness—are (or are imagined to be) class-based affirmative action's primary beneficiaries. The Article explores the case of Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and unemployed single mothers as an example of the racist nature of deservingness. It argues that if class-based affirmative action functions to assist people of color in disproportionate numbers, it, like AFDC and TANF before it, will be reimagined to be a program that assists the undeserving poor, and its political tenability will suffer as a result.

Introduction...........................................................................................1051

I. Revealing the Contradiction...................................................1055

A. Conservative Support for Class-Based Affirmative Action..... 1055
B. Addressing Poverty: Conservative Distaste for Direct Transfers of Wealth................................................................................. 1065
C. Class-Based Affirmative Action as a Direct Transfer of Wealth 1068

II. Reconciling the Contradiction................................................1070

A. The Varying Levels of Support for Safety Net Programs........ 1070
B. Theorizing the Uneven Support for the Social Safety Net: The Deserving and Undeserving Poor ................................... 1074
C. Class-Based Affirmative Action and the Deserving Poor........ 1079

III. Critiquing Class-Based Affirmative Action.........................1085

A. The Inefficacy of Class-Based Affirmative Action as an Antipoverty Program ......................................................... 1085
B. The Racialization of Deservingness ....................................... 1091

1. Race-Neutral Characteristics that Strongly Correlate with Race.................................................................................. 1101
2. The (Un)Deservingness of Children? ............................... 1104
3. The Medicaid Expansion and the Racialization of Deservingness............................................................... 1108

Conclusion...............................................................................................1112

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Introduction

In conservative political scientist Charles Murray's recent book, Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010, he argues that there has been an increasing divide in "white America" between the haves and the have-nots.¹ This divide, he argues, threatens the country.² However, the situation is not hopeless, he contends. Murray—the W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank³ —has identified class-based affirmative action as part of the solution to the nation's class divide crisis. He argues that we should "replace ethnic affirmative action with socioeconomic affirmative action. This is a no-brainer."⁴

What is interesting is that Murray first began to garner national attention after he published Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980, a book that argued the nation would be better off if it dismantled the welfare state in its entirety.⁵ Murray claimed that transfers—in which resources are taken from the haves and given to the have-nots—were plentiful in our society.⁶ He lists "welfare programs," "jobs programs," "federal efforts to foster better health and housing among the disadvantaged," and "Affirmative Action" as all involving some type of transfer.⁷ However, he argues that there are many reasons for "regarding transfers with suspicion. Any compulsory transfer from one person to another person unavoidably puts a terrific burden on the rule-maker to be 'right' in decisions that call for very subjective, difficult judgments about who has a greater need of what, and about long-term versus short term outcomes."⁸ He ultimately concludes that, given the difficulty of making the "right" decision about transfers, and given that the transfers made by the welfare state often

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incentivize bad behavior, we ought not to make these transfers to reduce poverty or its effects.⁹

And, thus, we witness a contradiction: Murray has famously argued against transferring resources from the haves to the have-nots to help those mired in poverty. Nevertheless, he supports class-based affirmation action, a program that involves transferring resources—in this case, a seat in an incoming class—from the haves to the have-nots in an effort to help those mired in poverty.

The contradiction that Murray inhabits is worth reiterating: although many professed political conservatives like Murray have championed class-based affirmative action, political conservatism is not typically identified as an ideology that generally approves of improving the poor's well-being through the means class-based affirmative action employs—that is, through redistributing wealth by taking wealth from a wealthy individual and giving it directly to a poor person. This Article attempts to reconcile this apparent contradiction. Interestingly, engaging in this project of reconciliation reveals very little about conservatism, but a lot about class-based affirmative action.

This Article proposes that class-based affirmative action enjoys widespread support from people across the political spectrum because it is imagined to benefit the "deserving poor." Unlike the "undeserving poor," the "deserving poor" are those who cannot be blamed for their poverty; their impoverishment is not due to individual behavioral or character flaws, but rather to structural or macro forces well outside of an individual's control. Class-based affirmative action enjoys bipartisan political popularity because it is imagined to benefit these respectable poor people—folks who are deserving of a "leg up" in the admissions competition and deserving of programs designed to assist them, even if those programs involve a direct transfer of wealth from the wealthy to the poor.

However, that political conservatives and liberals alike currently imagine class-based affirmative action to benefit the deserving poor is a reason for pause. Indeed, it is a reason for alarm. Alarm bells should ring because, throughout history, the categories of the deserving and undeserving poor have been racialized—and, frequently, racist. To be precise, it has been difficult for people of color—black people, particularly—to access the ranks of the deserving poor. The historical tendency has been to attribute black people's poverty to their personal shortcomings. If history is a teacher, then we might expect it will be

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difficult for people to continue to imagine that the beneficiaries of class-based affirmative action are the deserving poor if these class-conscious programs disproportionately benefit racial minorities. Indeed, if history is a teacher, then class-based affirmative action will lose its popularity among political conservatives and liberals if poor racial minorities—who have figured within the cultural imaginary as the embodiment of undeservingness—are (or are imagined to be) class-based affirmative action's primary beneficiaries, as these programs will then be understood as...