Brooks and Capehart on the implications of the Supreme Courts landmark decisions
David Brooks:
Yes, I think there are three things to be said about this.
One, we need to have diverse colleges and universities. We need to have diverse — all our institutions. Two, I do think there was massive discrimination against Asian Americans. And, three, the college admissions game at the elite level is rigged toward the rich. There are so many of these schools have more families, more kids from families in the top 1 percent than the bottom 60 percent.
And so, to me, the way out, which I hope colleges will do, will say, OK, you're not allowing us to do racial preferences, but we're going to do class preferences. And if you come from a family with less wealth, we're going to give you a preference.
And if you do that, because of the historic disparities, say, between Blacks and whites, you can increase the number of Blacks students, increase the number of Hispanic students, and you basically take down what has become a caste society, where rich parents send their rich kids to elite schools, who then marry each other and have educated kids who go to elite schools.
And that has just created this horrific class divide in our society. So I think there is a way to do this right and get everything we want, but the universities have to be willing to not bias their whole system, these elite universities, toward the rich.
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