On Charles Murray, the black lawyer's son, the white plumber's son and college admissio... - 0 views
-
Jeff Bernstein on 11 Mar 12Charles Murray, the author of the much-discussed book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 , (and, years ago, the widely discredited volume, The Bell Curve ) has an op-ed in today's New York Times outlining some solutions to the growing class divide that he depicts in Coming Apart . Among his ideas is to "replace ethnic affirmative action with socioeconomic affirmative action." Murray writes: "This is a no-brainer. It is absurd, in 2012, to give the son of a black lawyer an advantage in college admissions but not do the same for the son of a white plumber." I've been a long time advocate of class-based affirmative action, going back to my 1996 book, The Remedy: Class, Race and Affirmative Action , so on the one hand I'm pleased by his article, but in other ways I am dismayed.