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Class Matters: The Fight to Get Beyond Race Preferences, Reduce Inequality, and Build Real Diversity at America’s Colleges
A powerful argument for a class-based approach to college admissions that “shows where we have gone wrong so far, and how we will get to justice, equality, and even diversity for real” (John McWhorter)
For decades America’s colleges and universities have been working to increase racial diversity. But they have been using the wrong approach, as Richard Kahlenberg persuasively shows in his highly personal and deeply researched book. Kahlenberg makes the definitive case that class disadvantage, rather than race, should be the determining factor for how a broader array of people “get in.”
While elite universities claim to be on the side of social justice, the dirty secret of higher education is that the perennial focus on racial diversity has provided cover for an admissions system that mostly benefits the wealthy and shuts out talented working-class students. By fixing the class bias in college admissions we can begin to rectify America’s skyrocketing economic inequality and class antagonism, giving more people a better place at the table as they move through life and more opportunity to “swim in the river of power.”
Kahlenberg has long worked with prominent civil rights leaders on housing and school integration. But his recognition of class inequality in American higher education led to his making a controversial decision to go over to the “other side” and provide research and testimony in cases that helped lead to the controversial Supreme Court decision of 2023 that ended racial preferences. That conservative ruling could, Kahlenberg shows, paradoxically have a progressive policy outcome by cutting a new path for economic and racial diversity alike – and greater fairness.
For decades America’s colleges and universities have been working to increase racial diversity. But they have been using the wrong approach, as Richard Kahlenberg persuasively shows in his highly personal and deeply researched book. Kahlenberg makes the definitive case that class disadvantage, rather than race, should be the determining factor for how a broader array of people “get in.”
While elite universities claim to be on the side of social justice, the dirty secret of higher education is that the perennial focus on racial diversity has provided cover for an admissions system that mostly benefits the wealthy and shuts out talented working-class students. By fixing the class bias in college admissions we can begin to rectify America’s skyrocketing economic inequality and class antagonism, giving more people a better place at the table as they move through life and more opportunity to “swim in the river of power.”
Kahlenberg has long worked with prominent civil rights leaders on housing and school integration. But his recognition of class inequality in American higher education led to his making a controversial decision to go over to the “other side” and provide research and testimony in cases that helped lead to the controversial Supreme Court decision of 2023 that ended racial preferences. That conservative ruling could, Kahlenberg shows, paradoxically have a progressive policy outcome by cutting a new path for economic and racial diversity alike – and greater fairness.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published March 25, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 10, 2026
Having heard the author interviewed recently on NPR I had such high hopes for this read.
Alas...
Achieving class-based affirmative action is a public policy goal of the highest order. It’s a shame Supreme Court jurisprudence never embraced class a subject worthy of extended Constitutional analysis. The salutary potential implications of that possibility were strangled in the crib in the Court’s 1973 ruling in San Antonio Independent School District vs Rodriguez.
That said, that worthy goal is done a deep disservice in this book through its superficiality and sloppy reasoning. The relentless disparagement of even minimal race-conscious affirmative action is deeply troubling. The ahistorical approach characteristic of much of the book is sad. Kahlenburg should know better. Much better.
Kahlenberg’s favorable citation of John Roberts question to Seth Waxman, who was representing Harvard in its Supreme Court defense of retaining a modest basis for race-based affirmative action, is a telling example of this flaw.
According to Roberts, “We did not fight a Civil War about oboe players. We did fight a Civil War to eliminate racial discrimination.” (page 250).
That, of course, is outrageously silly and misleading. That war was fought, even in its most noble telling, to end slavery. Ending racial discrimination was never a goal. Racial discrimination was actually a de jure problem for decades after that war and remains perhaps the most nettlesome legacy of this nation’s founding, though Native Americans may legitimately lay claim to their treatment as an even more egregious part of our history.
The contrast between the embrace of Roberts’ gross mischaracterization and Kahlenberg’s cursory disparagement of the 1619 Project is telling. (page 230). The description of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts as modern McCarthyism is noxious. (page 231).
Another particularly disturbing element is the author’s fawning over Larry Summers. (pages 106, 110-111, 124, ad nauseum). There is no mention of his misogynistic musings about the genetic basis for women’s absence in the hard sciences which clearly predated this publication. The lack of any allusion to Summer’s Epstein escapades is, one hopes, attributable to the fact that they hadn’t all come to full light before this book found its way into bookstores.
When Kahlenburg seeks to support his arguments, he dives deeply into murky pseudo statistical analyses that lend an air of false certitude (Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics anyone?) while delivering criticisms to those with differing views in a manner that is glib and disparaging.
He dwells on the supposed self-serving financial considerations that cause institutions of higher learning to focus diversity efforts on race rather than class. He never mentions the fact that many large corporations and the U.S. military also joined efforts at the Supreme Court to retain race based affirmative action, perhaps because the argument that they too were motivated by financial considerations doesn’t hold water. The Court's decision in Students for Fair Admissions in fact let stand race-conscious admissions in the U.S. military academies, a fact which receives zero notice or comment by Kahlenberg. Curious omission.
Even the financial considerations the author repeatedly parrots in the context of universities retaining some modicum of race-based affirmative action seem to fall by the wayside in a remarkable admission. “Once racial preferences were declared illegal, however, resources became available”. (pg. 279). Confused and confusing.
One final note: the author has a persistent tendency toward self-congratulatory back patting that's suggestive of insecurity or some such.
There should be no arguing that class should be considered in many arenas including educational opportunity and admissions to elite institutions of higher learning. It does not, however, follow that race should not continue to be a factor in those same admissions processes.
Addendum: In the March 26, 2026 edition of the New York Review of Books David Coles, Professor of Law at Georgetown Law School and former Legal Director of the ACLU, reviews a new book by Justin Driver (The Fall of Affirmative Action: Race, the Supreme Court, and the Future of Higher Education) which covers much of the same ground as Kahlenberg's effort. While I have not yet read Mr. Driver's book (though it's now in my queue) Professor Coles' description of it, as well as Coles' independent analysis of the matters covered in it, represent a very thoughtful and nuanced approach to affirmative action and the goal of racial diversity.
Seems a better place to start than Class Matters.
Alas...
Achieving class-based affirmative action is a public policy goal of the highest order. It’s a shame Supreme Court jurisprudence never embraced class a subject worthy of extended Constitutional analysis. The salutary potential implications of that possibility were strangled in the crib in the Court’s 1973 ruling in San Antonio Independent School District vs Rodriguez.
That said, that worthy goal is done a deep disservice in this book through its superficiality and sloppy reasoning. The relentless disparagement of even minimal race-conscious affirmative action is deeply troubling. The ahistorical approach characteristic of much of the book is sad. Kahlenburg should know better. Much better.
Kahlenberg’s favorable citation of John Roberts question to Seth Waxman, who was representing Harvard in its Supreme Court defense of retaining a modest basis for race-based affirmative action, is a telling example of this flaw.
According to Roberts, “We did not fight a Civil War about oboe players. We did fight a Civil War to eliminate racial discrimination.” (page 250).
That, of course, is outrageously silly and misleading. That war was fought, even in its most noble telling, to end slavery. Ending racial discrimination was never a goal. Racial discrimination was actually a de jure problem for decades after that war and remains perhaps the most nettlesome legacy of this nation’s founding, though Native Americans may legitimately lay claim to their treatment as an even more egregious part of our history.
The contrast between the embrace of Roberts’ gross mischaracterization and Kahlenberg’s cursory disparagement of the 1619 Project is telling. (page 230). The description of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts as modern McCarthyism is noxious. (page 231).
Another particularly disturbing element is the author’s fawning over Larry Summers. (pages 106, 110-111, 124, ad nauseum). There is no mention of his misogynistic musings about the genetic basis for women’s absence in the hard sciences which clearly predated this publication. The lack of any allusion to Summer’s Epstein escapades is, one hopes, attributable to the fact that they hadn’t all come to full light before this book found its way into bookstores.
When Kahlenburg seeks to support his arguments, he dives deeply into murky pseudo statistical analyses that lend an air of false certitude (Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics anyone?) while delivering criticisms to those with differing views in a manner that is glib and disparaging.
He dwells on the supposed self-serving financial considerations that cause institutions of higher learning to focus diversity efforts on race rather than class. He never mentions the fact that many large corporations and the U.S. military also joined efforts at the Supreme Court to retain race based affirmative action, perhaps because the argument that they too were motivated by financial considerations doesn’t hold water. The Court's decision in Students for Fair Admissions in fact let stand race-conscious admissions in the U.S. military academies, a fact which receives zero notice or comment by Kahlenberg. Curious omission.
Even the financial considerations the author repeatedly parrots in the context of universities retaining some modicum of race-based affirmative action seem to fall by the wayside in a remarkable admission. “Once racial preferences were declared illegal, however, resources became available”. (pg. 279). Confused and confusing.
One final note: the author has a persistent tendency toward self-congratulatory back patting that's suggestive of insecurity or some such.
There should be no arguing that class should be considered in many arenas including educational opportunity and admissions to elite institutions of higher learning. It does not, however, follow that race should not continue to be a factor in those same admissions processes.
Addendum: In the March 26, 2026 edition of the New York Review of Books David Coles, Professor of Law at Georgetown Law School and former Legal Director of the ACLU, reviews a new book by Justin Driver (The Fall of Affirmative Action: Race, the Supreme Court, and the Future of Higher Education) which covers much of the same ground as Kahlenberg's effort. While I have not yet read Mr. Driver's book (though it's now in my queue) Professor Coles' description of it, as well as Coles' independent analysis of the matters covered in it, represent a very thoughtful and nuanced approach to affirmative action and the goal of racial diversity.
Seems a better place to start than Class Matters.
July 9, 2025
There is no denying that groups of people have been blatantly discriminated against in our country and as a result of that discrimination many people have been held back in lower socioeconomic groups.
For years, universities have tried to address that by giving members of these groups an opportunity by admitting them into their programs. But, many times, they give opportunities to members of those groups who are in higher socioeconomic backgrounds, so does it really make a difference?
The books author makes an argument that when people universities admit children of large donors, alumni and employees, they tend to limit diversity. Thus his argument to give admission opportunities to top performers of HS, regardless of which school system they are in.
He does a solid job reviewing the history of the challenges and court cases surrounding the university affirmative action programs.
For me the book opened my eyes to the gravity of the problem and the fact that there are no easy answers.
For years, universities have tried to address that by giving members of these groups an opportunity by admitting them into their programs. But, many times, they give opportunities to members of those groups who are in higher socioeconomic backgrounds, so does it really make a difference?
The books author makes an argument that when people universities admit children of large donors, alumni and employees, they tend to limit diversity. Thus his argument to give admission opportunities to top performers of HS, regardless of which school system they are in.
He does a solid job reviewing the history of the challenges and court cases surrounding the university affirmative action programs.
For me the book opened my eyes to the gravity of the problem and the fact that there are no easy answers.
April 20, 2025
Excellent and compelling, if a tad self-congratulatory at times.
December 21, 2025
If I could have I would have given it a 3.5. Enlightening. I think the author is naive and unjustifiably optimistic.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews