As the Supreme Court considers whether to ditch race-based affirmative action, a growing chorus now calls for creating diversity principles around class rather than race. I've also pitched in my two cents, drawing on my own experiences, as someone who moved from a trailer house in Oklahoma to the University of Oxford, in a current review for The New Republic of Elizabeth Aries's book, Speaking of Race and Class: The Student Experience at an Elite College. For me, the most fascinating aspect of Aries's book is the way it complicates the arguments for class-based affirmative action by showing that lower-income students suffer some pretty serious alienation on elite campuses. Unlike their minority peers, who often arrive on campus to an established support network, students who are poor but not minority can find themselves adrift "on another planet," as one of the students in the book relates. As with race-based affirmative action, this doesn't mean the idea should be scrapped -- but it does remind us that any effective diversity program will need to remember that "admissions" really only constitutes a small part of the college experience.
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