Should Affirmative Action Be Colorblind?
Channel: Economic Policy Institute
Date: 2014-12-05

A debate between noted scholars on affirmative action in American higher education, featuring Georgetown University Law Professor Sheryll Cashin and Richard Rothstein, a research associate at EPI.

In her 2014 book, Place, Not Race, Cashin argues that race-based affirmative action is neither desirable nor necessary, citing its impediment to coalition-building with whites and the importance for universities of recruiting deserving but economically disadvantaged students of all races and ethnicities who live in low-income neighborhoods or whose families have little wealth.

EPI research associate Richard Rothstein, in a critical review of Cashin’s book, argues that race-based policies remain necessary to address the unique exploitation of African Americans and to enroll middle-class black students who are most in need of affirmative action. Colorblind recruitment of disadvantaged students is desirable, he says, but not as a substitute for race-based policy.

From the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, DC.
www.epi.org