Class must be a factor for fairness, opportunity

 My late father was insightful. Two of the long-time lineman’s comments stand out. One was in response to the conceit of “writer’s block”: “It’s odd,” he said. “I never had ‘lineman’s block’.” He also shared a perspective on jobs: “Some people shower before work; others shower after work.”

This Labor Day – weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court banned affirmative action in college admissions (overturning 45 years of precedent and bipartisan support) – it’s time to consider class as a way to open up opportunity to everyone.

Considering class (economic class, that is, not the exclusive, chic, high-class air, like Will Farrell’s Ron Burgundy meant in “Anchorman,” when he signed off, “Stay classy, San Diego”) is a key to justice and democracy, for striving toward equality and civic participation.

The high court’s decision overlooked the routine favoritism shown to the privileged, the too-common way of welcoming sons and daughters of the affluent or well-connected.

For instance, the New York Times reports that at the University of Virginia and other familiar universities, less than 15% of recent undergraduate students come from households with incomes low enough to quality for Pell Grants, the largest federal financial-aid program. In fact, its analysis shows, more undergrads come from the top 1% of family income than the whole bottom 60%.

Further, in a study published July 24 (“Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of

Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges”), National Bureau of Economic Research scholars showed that wealthy students are twice as likely to gain admission compared to working- or middle-class applicants with similar test scores.

Even some 85% of Black and biracial students who’ve graduated from Ivy League schools come from middle- or upper-class families, according to Bertrand Cooper in The Atlantic magazine.

But there’s no real social diversity – of ensuring a group that looks a lot like the country – without including the working class, and policies that exclude such people limit their chances to achieve a middle-class standard of living, regardless of race or religion, gender or geography.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Education – responding to a complaint from the nonprofit Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR) – launched a probe into Harvard’s practice of giving admission preference to applicants with family ties to donors or previous graduates (so-called “legacy” applicants).

“Why are we rewarding children for privileges and advantages accrued by prior generations?” asked LCR executive director Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal. “Your family’s last name and the size of your bank account are not a measure of merit and should have no bearing on the college admissions process.”

Plus, paying attention to the working class is popular with Americans, according to research by the Center for Working-Class Politics, whose recent survey showed that the public – Democrat, Republican or independent – responds positively to efforts to address the economic interests of working people, including job guarantees and training, increasing the minimum wage, and increasing taxes on the rich.

Besides, young people from the upper class have built-in advantages, going to better high schools, getting help from educated parents or paid tutors, being familiar with methods to build resumes with impressive extracurricular activities, and taking standardized tests more than once.

But people from the working class have promise, too.

Americans economically marginalized by their families’ income – again from any race – will benefit from admission policies that “treat class as meaningful,” Cooper wrote.

Indeed, as NAACP President Derrick Johnson remarked, higher education should “work for every American, not just the privileged few.”