Color and Money or Taking Rights Seriously

Color and Money: How Rich White Kids Are Winning the War over College Affirmative Action

Author: Peter Schmidt

What is the real story behind the fight over affirmative action in college admissions? Veteran journalist Peter Schmidt reveals truths that will outrage readers and forever transform the debate.

His book exposes the hidden agendas of all sides, revealing how:

* The conservative opposition to affirmative action preaches equality in college admissions, yet guts programs that help poor kids get in the running.

* The higher education establishment feeds lies to the federal courts and the public about the benefits of affirmative action, and attempts to squelch any talk about how selective colleges’ favoritism toward the privileged undermines professed commitments to diversity.

* Affirmative action has evolved from a means of bringing about social justice into a tool colleges cynically use to sell themselves and attract corporate support.

* Lower and middle class students of all races are being lost in the affirmative action struggle.

The underlying premise is that affirmative action is a band aid used to hide a very deep wound that neither side of the debate has much interest in treating any time soon. The real winners in the war over college affirmative action are rich white kids, whose spot on the inside track is secure no matter which side comes out on top. The real losers are African- American, Hispanic, and Asian-American kids, who continue to have the deck stacked against them, and those worthy white kids who lack cash and connections and find their futures sacrificed by colleges for “diversity” and the almighty dollar.  Unafraid to shine a harsh light on schools such as Harvard, the University of Michigan,Princeton, and the University of California, this is a startling and brave book that will inspire a national dialogue on class, race, and education.

Kirkus Reviews

A blunt book about inequality in admissions at elite colleges. After four decades of affirmative action and much official rhetoric about making higher education available to all qualified students, the nation's most selective colleges and universities remain "bastions of privilege," writes Schmidt, deputy editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education. Each year, tens of thousands of excellent applicants are turned down by Yale, Harvard and other top schools to make way for the wealthy and well connected. As a result, a rich kid has about 25 times as much chance as a poor one of enrolling at one of 160 selective colleges. All of this, the author contends, contradicts the 2003 Supreme Court decision upholding affirmative action at the University of Michigan, which said colleges must be "visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity." Much of Schmidt's book recounts the history of college admissions from the 1900s, when virtually any graduate of feeder boarding schools could enter Harvard and Yale. While societal changes such as standardized tests, the G.I. Bill, 1960s social unrest and affirmative action transformed higher education and weakened the hold of the wealthy, working class and poor students are still underrepresented at top schools. The author draws on studies and his own reporting to show how affirmative action has played out in recent years. Economic class continues to shape children's fates, he argues; poor kids grow up in segregated neighborhoods with inadequate schools, while wealthy whites enjoy outstanding schooling, special preparation for standardized tests and preferential college admission. All the while, colleges try to project a diverseimage. They also capitalize on society's diversity-consciousness by joining with corporations (in return for major financial support) to recruit minority students in package deals under which the students then go to work for the same companies upon graduation. Offers a solid overview and a forceful reminder that money still trumps merit on the most prestigious campuses. Agent: Sara Crowe/Harvey Klinger Inc.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments     vii
Introduction: A Celebration of the Few     1
Skimming the Top: How Money Rises Above Merit     13
Crossing Eight Mile: How the Rich Deny Education to the Poor     39
Putting Out Fires: The Origins of College Affirmative Action     65
The Golden Pipeline: Profiting from Preferences     87
Collegiate Divisions: The Volatile Mix on Campuses     97
Assault from the Right: Affirmative Action Under Attack     111
By Any Means Necessary: Black Voices Fight to Be Heard     131
Breaching Walls: The Uprising of the Excluded     141
The Diversity Dodge: Fuzzy Research to the Rescue     161
Supreme Reckoning: The Changing Legal Landscape     173
The Worried White House: Bush Faces an American Dilemma     181
Voices from on High: The Establishment Speaks     193
Affirmative Action Affirmed: The Supreme Court Grants a Reprieve     203
The Struggle Continues: Democracy Rears Its Head     211
Epilogue     223
Notes     227
Index     253

Interesting textbook: Kostenmanagement: Eine Strategische Betonung

Taking Rights Seriously

Author: Ronald D Dworkin

What is law? What is it for? How should judges decide novel cases when the statutes and earlier decisions provide no clear answer? Do judges make up new law in such cases, or is there some higher law in which they discover the correct answer? Must everyone always obey the law? If not, when is a citizen morally free to disobey?

A renowned philosopher enters the debate surrounding these questions. Clearly and forcefully, Ronald Dworkin argues against the "ruling" theory in Anglo-American law-legal positivism and economic utilitarianism and asserts that individuals have legal rights beyond those explicitly laid down and that they have political and moral rights against the state that are prior to the welfare of the majority.

Mr. Dworkin criticizes in detail the legal positivists' theory of legal rights, particularly H. L. A. Hart's well-known version of it. He then develops a new theory of adjudication, and applies it to the central and politically important issue of cases in which the Supreme Court interprets and applies the Constitution. Through an analysis of Rawls's theory of justice, he argues that fundamental among political rights is the right of each individual to the equal respect and concern of those who govern him. He offers a theory of compliance with the law designed not simply to answer theoretical questions about civil disobedience, but to function as a guide for citizens and officials. Finally, Professor Dworkin considers the right to liberty, often thought to rival and even pre-empt the fundamental right to equality. He argues that distinct individual liberties do exist, but that they derive, not from some abstract right to liberty as such, but fromthe right to equal concern and respect itself. He thus denies that liberty and equality are conflicting ideals.

Ronald Dworkin's theory of law and the moral conception of individual rights that underlies it have already made him one of the most influential philosophers working in this area. This is the first publication of these ideas in book form.