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The Diversity Bargain: And Other Dilemmas of Race, Admissions, and Meritocracy at Elite Universities
We’ve heard plenty from politicians and experts on affirmative action and higher education, about how universities should intervene—if at all—to ensure a diverse but deserving student population. But what about those for whom these issues matter the most? In this book, Natasha K. Warikoo deeply explores how students themselves think about merit and race at a uniquely pivotal after they have just won the most competitive game of their lives and gained admittance to one of the world’s top universities.
What Warikoo uncovers—talking with both white students and students of color at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford—is absolutely illuminating; and some of it is positively shocking. As she shows, many elite white students understand the value of diversity abstractly, but they ignore the real problems that racial inequality causes and that diversity programs are meant to solve. They stand in fear of being labeled a racist, but they are quick to call foul should a diversity program appear at all to hamper their own chances for advancement. The most troubling result of this ambivalence is what she calls the “diversity bargain,” in which white students reluctantly agree with affirmative action as long as it benefits them by providing a diverse learning environment—racial diversity, in this way, is a commodity, a selling point on a brochure. And as Warikoo shows, universities play a big part in creating these situations. The way they talk about race on campus and the kinds of diversity programs they offer have a huge impact on student attitudes, shaping them either toward ambivalence or, in better cases, toward more productive and considerate understandings of racial difference.
Ultimately, this book demonstrates just how slippery the notions of race, merit, and privilege can be. In doing so, it asks important questions not just about college admissions but what the elite students who have succeeded at it—who will be the world’s future leaders—will do with the social inequalities of the wider world.
What Warikoo uncovers—talking with both white students and students of color at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford—is absolutely illuminating; and some of it is positively shocking. As she shows, many elite white students understand the value of diversity abstractly, but they ignore the real problems that racial inequality causes and that diversity programs are meant to solve. They stand in fear of being labeled a racist, but they are quick to call foul should a diversity program appear at all to hamper their own chances for advancement. The most troubling result of this ambivalence is what she calls the “diversity bargain,” in which white students reluctantly agree with affirmative action as long as it benefits them by providing a diverse learning environment—racial diversity, in this way, is a commodity, a selling point on a brochure. And as Warikoo shows, universities play a big part in creating these situations. The way they talk about race on campus and the kinds of diversity programs they offer have a huge impact on student attitudes, shaping them either toward ambivalence or, in better cases, toward more productive and considerate understandings of racial difference.
Ultimately, this book demonstrates just how slippery the notions of race, merit, and privilege can be. In doing so, it asks important questions not just about college admissions but what the elite students who have succeeded at it—who will be the world’s future leaders—will do with the social inequalities of the wider world.
320 pages, Hardcover
Published November 15, 2016
17 people are currently reading
364 people want to read
About the author
Natasha K. Warikoo
5 books9 followersNatasha Kumar Warikoo is Associate Professor of Education at Harvard University. She is an expert on the relationships between education, racial and ethnic diversity, and cultural processes in schools and universities. Her most recent book, The Diversity Bargain: And Other Dilemmas of Race, Admissions, and Meritocracy at Elite Universities (University of Chicago Press, 2016), illuminates how undergraduates attending Ivy League universities and Oxford University conceptualize race and meritocracy. The book emphasizes the contradictions, moral conundrums, and tensions on campus related to affirmative action and diversity, and how these vary across racial and national lines. Natasha’s first book, Balancing Acts: Youth Culture in the Global City (University of California Press, 2011), analyzes youth culture among children of immigrants attending diverse, low-performing high schools in New York City and London. Balancing Acts won the Thomas and Znaneicki Best Book Award from the American Sociological Association’s International Migration Section. Both of these projects involve extensive ethnographic research in the United States and Britain. In 2017-2018 Warikoo will be a Guggenheim Fellow, studying racial change in suburban America.
Natasha’s research has also been published in scholarly journals (American Journal of Education; British Education Research Journal; Educational Researcher; Poetics; Race, Ethnicity and Education; Ethnic and Racial Studies (also here); Review of Educational Research; Sociological Forum), edited books, and newspapers (Education Week, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post), and she has won grants and awards from American Sociological Association, the British Academy, National Science Foundation, Nuffield Foundation, and Russell Sage Foundation. Her recent articles can be accessed for free here.
At Harvard, Natasha teaches courses on racial inequality and the role of culture in K-12 and higher education. She serves as co-chair of the School Advisory Council of her children’s public elementary school in Cambridge, and has been actively involved in the political process in Cambridge.
Prior to her academic career, Natasha was a teacher in New York City’s public schools for four years, and also spent time working at the US Department of Education and as a fellow with the Teachers Network Leadership Institute. Natasha completed her PhD in sociology from Harvard University, and BSc and BA in mathematics and philosophy at Brown University. She lives in Cambridge with her husband Ramesh Kumar and their three children.
Natasha’s research has also been published in scholarly journals (American Journal of Education; British Education Research Journal; Educational Researcher; Poetics; Race, Ethnicity and Education; Ethnic and Racial Studies (also here); Review of Educational Research; Sociological Forum), edited books, and newspapers (Education Week, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post), and she has won grants and awards from American Sociological Association, the British Academy, National Science Foundation, Nuffield Foundation, and Russell Sage Foundation. Her recent articles can be accessed for free here.
At Harvard, Natasha teaches courses on racial inequality and the role of culture in K-12 and higher education. She serves as co-chair of the School Advisory Council of her children’s public elementary school in Cambridge, and has been actively involved in the political process in Cambridge.
Prior to her academic career, Natasha was a teacher in New York City’s public schools for four years, and also spent time working at the US Department of Education and as a fellow with the Teachers Network Leadership Institute. Natasha completed her PhD in sociology from Harvard University, and BSc and BA in mathematics and philosophy at Brown University. She lives in Cambridge with her husband Ramesh Kumar and their three children.
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March 27, 2019
This is an important book and worth reading. I was disappointed by several aspects of it, however, and wish it was better constructed and more effective at reaching for its broad study goals.
Professor Warikoo is a sociologist who is on the faculty of the education school at Harvard. This book reports on research designed to study how a diverse sample of students at elite research universities in the US and the UK come to grips with issues of race in school admissions, especially admissions at the most selective schools in the world. Warikoo is interested in a comparison of schools that differ in their policies regarding race, diversity, and admissions and so chooses Harvard and Brown. She is also interested in a comparison of US schools with elite schools in countries with different histories of race and segregation, which leads to the conclusion of Oxford into the study design. The study design combines a stratified sample survey approach with follow-up interviews with respondents about their surveys and related topics. About 150 students were studied for this project.
I could not have picked a better time to read this, since it is just after the most recent elite college admissions scandal broke in the news and over social media. The details of the scandal may help to weaken residual beliefs on the part of newly accepted students that they were admitted largely on the basis of merit rather than the workings of privilege and/or corruption. It could also lead to a more solid basis for a class story - namely that the various groups at elite institutions have a common goal of keeping out the poorer classes - which has long had credence about the Ivies and Oxbridge.
What does she find? About what you would expect if you have some familiarity with these schools. Students come to different understandings of race. There is a residual belief that students admitted to these institutions have been awarded their places on the basis of merit, although what meritocracy involves on matters of college admissions and minority/racial status is less clear. At the same time, there is a widespread sense that the history of race in the US and the changing demographics of the country makes diversity an important element in the education of students at elite institutions and a key influence on how these future leaders will join the establishment to lead the country. The same is true of British students, absent the history of race, segregation, affirmative action, and the like that is omnipresent at US schools. At the same time, students are aware of the tensions involved in affirmative action and how the granting of places to members of historically disadvantaged groups can be taken as causing injury to white or Asian students who were not personally implicated in negative racial historical events - there is a conceptual space for issues of reverse discrimination.
So the participants in Warikoo’s study, in coming to grips with the current reality of race and status and university admissions, have to balance conflicting feelings, values, and traditions. They do so in a variety of ways employing what Warikoo refers to as racial frames, with most students having multiple ways to deal with these issues, depending on the social setting.
It is here where Professor Warikoo makes her contribution, by noting the idea of a “diversity bargain”. White students accept the value of minorities to their schools and to their education, even; if this also means that some deserving white students were not granted admission that they might well have earned on the basis of GPA and test scores. This acceptance comes because white students believe that they can learn from minorities in a diverse student bodies and that they receive a better education for life as a result. This potential, however, also requires that minority students be open to interacting with and learning from white students as well, leading to a sought after diverse student community as critical to the resolution of these issues. This is an intriguing and certainly plausible idea. How it actually works in practice is less clear. I am not sure what sort of a “thing” the diversity bargain really is. It does get one thinking and this is what made the book worth reading.
I have other gripes with the book and the study.
To start with, it is not obvious to me what the value of a small sample interview/survey study of the students can really tell us. There is lots of diversity among US elite schools and Oxbridge is hardly representative of other British schools. In addition, more students by far are obtaining quality education from the large state schools in the US - for example the main Big Ten schools. I am curious how the results of a study at these schools would compare with Warikoo’s results.
I am also unsure that surveying undergraduate students is the key to unlocking meaning of future leadership position holders. I know these students are our future .... but there are lots of students at different types of schools and it is not clear to me that everyone follows the Ivies for guidance as may have once been the case. The alternative story is that these communities are more intellectually and socially isolated that commonly recognized and that can lead to stranger things in undergraduate life. For more on this, I would direct readers to “The Coddling of the American Mind” and some of the events it chronicles.
Another issue I had was that Warikoo’s approach did not strike me as sufficiently rigorous to control for the ideological baggage that she might bring to the table. The survey was general. Not more analysis of the summary results was presented. The questions raised and vetted permit quite a bit of interpretation. Besides, these are undergraduates - they are learning as they go under the best of conditions. I certainly would not want to be held to my firm conclusions as a student long ago. Seriously, how would one show that Warikoo was wrong in the judgments she likes to make in the book? Do not get me wrong. I think she ends up in the right place, but with this type of analysis, someone wiser than me once noted that “thick description is a license to kill”. Some money spent on a good editor would also have been helpful.
The great strength of the book is that it brings more depth to a discussion of how diversity can be harnessed in educational institutions - and large organizations more generally. That is a contribution. I cannot wait for further progress to me made on Warikoo’s work.
Professor Warikoo is a sociologist who is on the faculty of the education school at Harvard. This book reports on research designed to study how a diverse sample of students at elite research universities in the US and the UK come to grips with issues of race in school admissions, especially admissions at the most selective schools in the world. Warikoo is interested in a comparison of schools that differ in their policies regarding race, diversity, and admissions and so chooses Harvard and Brown. She is also interested in a comparison of US schools with elite schools in countries with different histories of race and segregation, which leads to the conclusion of Oxford into the study design. The study design combines a stratified sample survey approach with follow-up interviews with respondents about their surveys and related topics. About 150 students were studied for this project.
I could not have picked a better time to read this, since it is just after the most recent elite college admissions scandal broke in the news and over social media. The details of the scandal may help to weaken residual beliefs on the part of newly accepted students that they were admitted largely on the basis of merit rather than the workings of privilege and/or corruption. It could also lead to a more solid basis for a class story - namely that the various groups at elite institutions have a common goal of keeping out the poorer classes - which has long had credence about the Ivies and Oxbridge.
What does she find? About what you would expect if you have some familiarity with these schools. Students come to different understandings of race. There is a residual belief that students admitted to these institutions have been awarded their places on the basis of merit, although what meritocracy involves on matters of college admissions and minority/racial status is less clear. At the same time, there is a widespread sense that the history of race in the US and the changing demographics of the country makes diversity an important element in the education of students at elite institutions and a key influence on how these future leaders will join the establishment to lead the country. The same is true of British students, absent the history of race, segregation, affirmative action, and the like that is omnipresent at US schools. At the same time, students are aware of the tensions involved in affirmative action and how the granting of places to members of historically disadvantaged groups can be taken as causing injury to white or Asian students who were not personally implicated in negative racial historical events - there is a conceptual space for issues of reverse discrimination.
So the participants in Warikoo’s study, in coming to grips with the current reality of race and status and university admissions, have to balance conflicting feelings, values, and traditions. They do so in a variety of ways employing what Warikoo refers to as racial frames, with most students having multiple ways to deal with these issues, depending on the social setting.
It is here where Professor Warikoo makes her contribution, by noting the idea of a “diversity bargain”. White students accept the value of minorities to their schools and to their education, even; if this also means that some deserving white students were not granted admission that they might well have earned on the basis of GPA and test scores. This acceptance comes because white students believe that they can learn from minorities in a diverse student bodies and that they receive a better education for life as a result. This potential, however, also requires that minority students be open to interacting with and learning from white students as well, leading to a sought after diverse student community as critical to the resolution of these issues. This is an intriguing and certainly plausible idea. How it actually works in practice is less clear. I am not sure what sort of a “thing” the diversity bargain really is. It does get one thinking and this is what made the book worth reading.
I have other gripes with the book and the study.
To start with, it is not obvious to me what the value of a small sample interview/survey study of the students can really tell us. There is lots of diversity among US elite schools and Oxbridge is hardly representative of other British schools. In addition, more students by far are obtaining quality education from the large state schools in the US - for example the main Big Ten schools. I am curious how the results of a study at these schools would compare with Warikoo’s results.
I am also unsure that surveying undergraduate students is the key to unlocking meaning of future leadership position holders. I know these students are our future .... but there are lots of students at different types of schools and it is not clear to me that everyone follows the Ivies for guidance as may have once been the case. The alternative story is that these communities are more intellectually and socially isolated that commonly recognized and that can lead to stranger things in undergraduate life. For more on this, I would direct readers to “The Coddling of the American Mind” and some of the events it chronicles.
Another issue I had was that Warikoo’s approach did not strike me as sufficiently rigorous to control for the ideological baggage that she might bring to the table. The survey was general. Not more analysis of the summary results was presented. The questions raised and vetted permit quite a bit of interpretation. Besides, these are undergraduates - they are learning as they go under the best of conditions. I certainly would not want to be held to my firm conclusions as a student long ago. Seriously, how would one show that Warikoo was wrong in the judgments she likes to make in the book? Do not get me wrong. I think she ends up in the right place, but with this type of analysis, someone wiser than me once noted that “thick description is a license to kill”. Some money spent on a good editor would also have been helpful.
The great strength of the book is that it brings more depth to a discussion of how diversity can be harnessed in educational institutions - and large organizations more generally. That is a contribution. I cannot wait for further progress to me made on Warikoo’s work.
March 29, 2022
While there was a lot in this book that I have read about elsewhere, Warikoo did put forth some new ideas that I enjoyed reading about, specifically the idea of a "diversity bargain" that students feel is important in America. I also enjoyed reading about how things are done at Oxford versus Harvard and Brown here in the U.S. I would be curious to see if things were much different now, in this post-Trump era versus the cautiously optimistic Obama era.
February 18, 2020
I read this title for a staff book club I co-organize at my university. We read and discuss books dealing with social justice issues on campus.
Even though this book contains interesting hypotheses and assertions by the author--and I would describe some chapters, in which Warikoo gets into the background of diversity and orientation programs at elite universities, as "satisfyingly crunchy"--I did not enjoy the book as a complete product. Overall, the work struck me as unfocused.
I suspect this was an academic monograph (a focused research publication intended only for other researchers) that tried to make the leap to academic trade title on the strength of SEO-friendly subject matter. I also have to admit that the sore spots this book rubbed against are sore spots I have for the field of sociology as a whole--particularly the field's standards for what constitutes empirical evidence, and the tendency of sociological researchers to use purely external data to draw (bafflingly confident) conclusions about what's happening inside an individual's head. My opinion is that it's a "bro-y" field of social science. And maybe that's unfair... but it's a more upfront admission of bias than a sociologist has ever given. Wha-BAM!
Anyway. Warikoo sought to investigate attitudes about affirmative action programs from students enrolled in "top-tier" universities in the US and UK. She and her graduate researchers interviewed just over 100 students enrolled at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford to collect and analyze their attitudes about diversity on their campus. From this data, Warikoo asserts students make "diversity bargains" particular to the US and the UK.
In the US, the bargain is that white students accept affirmative action programs to the extent that such programs benefits their own educational experience, in essence treating diversity as a commodified educational product. As soon as these students perceive that they could "lose out" on an opportunity due to affirmative action, they identify such programs as bad. Even hypothetical losses could prompt a negative reaction to diversity programs. Several US interviewees express doubts that their peers belong at Harvard/Brown as much as they do.
In the UK (at least at Oxford, where admissions is conducted by instructors and almost exclusively focused on academic performance) the bargain is that nobody doubts that their peers belong at Oxford, but the culture doesn't allow anyone to talk about diversity or race relations. In fact, the interviews in the book reveal a pervasive British habit of telling "ironic" racial jokes.
This US/UK comparison is interesting and, in interviews elsewhere, Warikoo has claimed that this comparison was the purpose of her research. Oddly, she doesn't bring the UK data in until the 70% mark of the book's main text. The Oxford chapters are interesting, yet feel like an afterthought.
Regarding the US data, I particularly enjoyed ("enjoyed") chapters 3 and 5. The former went into a detailed comparison of diversity programming at Harvard and Brown--the perceived results of those programs in participating students, whether they were mandatory or optional, shallow or in-depth, and the attitudes about the programs from students at large. The latter chapter demonstrated how the American treatment of racism as an individual moral flaw--consisting of slurs and expressions of irrational hatred, and not systemic prejudice--creates pre-existing tensions that get in the way of productive interracial conversations. Americans are less willing to take the risk of being labeled racist and, with no risk, there's no meaningful dialogue.
That's what I liked. Now for what I did NOT like:
- Warikoo says she focused her study on Harvard, Brown and Oxford because these are "top tier" schools that "represent" the idea of college/university. There's an argument to be made for that perspective, but considering that Warikoo is an Ivy League grad who went on to teach at Ivy Leagues and is conducting her research on Ivy Leagues, she came across to me as someone working deep in the center of a bubble. At one point in Chapter 4, she hypothesizes that white students at "lower tier" universities will have more prejudice against affirmative action programs because they wanted to go to Harvard and didn't make it in. Which is... dumb. I wanted to be polite and say "wrongheaded," but that's a real dumb conclusion.
- The book can't seem to decide whether it's simply observing student attitudes in the system as it exists now, or casting judgments on the system. The author offers a lot of coy hints about her opinions in the book itself, and doesn't really offer a cohesive explanation until the conclusion of the book. It would have been beneficial to have some of that information upfront.
- The treatment of the interviewees is sketchy as hell. There are a handful of interviews where Warikoo goes out of the way to mention that a student was late, or that they said "um, like" a lot. This only seemed to be important for students who held views Warikoo disagrees with. In other places, Warikoo contradicts or misrepresents what students said. One Harvard student describing dancers at the Cultural Rhythms event identified the Irish as an ethnic group (which they are), and in the next paragraph Warikoo writes that it's "interesting" that the student identified the Irish as a "minority group" (which she had not done).
- Warikoo is a little too comfortable drawing conclusions about what's going on inside interview subjects' heads. In a chapter 5 interview, a student relates a problematic story about being "treated badly" at an airport where all the employees "happened to be black." But Warikoo goes on to lament that his "color-blindness frame ... prevent[s] him from understanding how labor market dynamics along with sociocultural history together produce situations in which all workers in a particular context are of one race, unlikely a mere coincidence." Which... no. Other than "unlikely a mere coincidence," literally none of that is obvious or readily available information. Eschewing a color-blindness frame isn't sufficient to understand the labor market or sociocultural history--one also needs to actively expose oneself to those fields in order to obtain that knowledge.
Final summation: The book was frequently interesting, but supremely uneven and occasionally WTF. The research took eight years and, given the national racial climate at the time of writing and publication (2016-ish), I suspect the author thought the book was a straight putt and got a little lazy in the execution.
Even though this book contains interesting hypotheses and assertions by the author--and I would describe some chapters, in which Warikoo gets into the background of diversity and orientation programs at elite universities, as "satisfyingly crunchy"--I did not enjoy the book as a complete product. Overall, the work struck me as unfocused.
I suspect this was an academic monograph (a focused research publication intended only for other researchers) that tried to make the leap to academic trade title on the strength of SEO-friendly subject matter. I also have to admit that the sore spots this book rubbed against are sore spots I have for the field of sociology as a whole--particularly the field's standards for what constitutes empirical evidence, and the tendency of sociological researchers to use purely external data to draw (bafflingly confident) conclusions about what's happening inside an individual's head. My opinion is that it's a "bro-y" field of social science. And maybe that's unfair... but it's a more upfront admission of bias than a sociologist has ever given. Wha-BAM!
Anyway. Warikoo sought to investigate attitudes about affirmative action programs from students enrolled in "top-tier" universities in the US and UK. She and her graduate researchers interviewed just over 100 students enrolled at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford to collect and analyze their attitudes about diversity on their campus. From this data, Warikoo asserts students make "diversity bargains" particular to the US and the UK.
In the US, the bargain is that white students accept affirmative action programs to the extent that such programs benefits their own educational experience, in essence treating diversity as a commodified educational product. As soon as these students perceive that they could "lose out" on an opportunity due to affirmative action, they identify such programs as bad. Even hypothetical losses could prompt a negative reaction to diversity programs. Several US interviewees express doubts that their peers belong at Harvard/Brown as much as they do.
In the UK (at least at Oxford, where admissions is conducted by instructors and almost exclusively focused on academic performance) the bargain is that nobody doubts that their peers belong at Oxford, but the culture doesn't allow anyone to talk about diversity or race relations. In fact, the interviews in the book reveal a pervasive British habit of telling "ironic" racial jokes.
This US/UK comparison is interesting and, in interviews elsewhere, Warikoo has claimed that this comparison was the purpose of her research. Oddly, she doesn't bring the UK data in until the 70% mark of the book's main text. The Oxford chapters are interesting, yet feel like an afterthought.
Regarding the US data, I particularly enjoyed ("enjoyed") chapters 3 and 5. The former went into a detailed comparison of diversity programming at Harvard and Brown--the perceived results of those programs in participating students, whether they were mandatory or optional, shallow or in-depth, and the attitudes about the programs from students at large. The latter chapter demonstrated how the American treatment of racism as an individual moral flaw--consisting of slurs and expressions of irrational hatred, and not systemic prejudice--creates pre-existing tensions that get in the way of productive interracial conversations. Americans are less willing to take the risk of being labeled racist and, with no risk, there's no meaningful dialogue.
That's what I liked. Now for what I did NOT like:
- Warikoo says she focused her study on Harvard, Brown and Oxford because these are "top tier" schools that "represent" the idea of college/university. There's an argument to be made for that perspective, but considering that Warikoo is an Ivy League grad who went on to teach at Ivy Leagues and is conducting her research on Ivy Leagues, she came across to me as someone working deep in the center of a bubble. At one point in Chapter 4, she hypothesizes that white students at "lower tier" universities will have more prejudice against affirmative action programs because they wanted to go to Harvard and didn't make it in. Which is... dumb. I wanted to be polite and say "wrongheaded," but that's a real dumb conclusion.
- The book can't seem to decide whether it's simply observing student attitudes in the system as it exists now, or casting judgments on the system. The author offers a lot of coy hints about her opinions in the book itself, and doesn't really offer a cohesive explanation until the conclusion of the book. It would have been beneficial to have some of that information upfront.
- The treatment of the interviewees is sketchy as hell. There are a handful of interviews where Warikoo goes out of the way to mention that a student was late, or that they said "um, like" a lot. This only seemed to be important for students who held views Warikoo disagrees with. In other places, Warikoo contradicts or misrepresents what students said. One Harvard student describing dancers at the Cultural Rhythms event identified the Irish as an ethnic group (which they are), and in the next paragraph Warikoo writes that it's "interesting" that the student identified the Irish as a "minority group" (which she had not done).
- Warikoo is a little too comfortable drawing conclusions about what's going on inside interview subjects' heads. In a chapter 5 interview, a student relates a problematic story about being "treated badly" at an airport where all the employees "happened to be black." But Warikoo goes on to lament that his "color-blindness frame ... prevent[s] him from understanding how labor market dynamics along with sociocultural history together produce situations in which all workers in a particular context are of one race, unlikely a mere coincidence." Which... no. Other than "unlikely a mere coincidence," literally none of that is obvious or readily available information. Eschewing a color-blindness frame isn't sufficient to understand the labor market or sociocultural history--one also needs to actively expose oneself to those fields in order to obtain that knowledge.
Final summation: The book was frequently interesting, but supremely uneven and occasionally WTF. The research took eight years and, given the national racial climate at the time of writing and publication (2016-ish), I suspect the author thought the book was a straight putt and got a little lazy in the execution.
November 15, 2020
Okay the issue about rating and reviewing books like these is that they really aren't entertaining to read. Yes, I find them very interesting and relevant, however, I can't say I have fun reading them. I read this book for my Educational Policy class and it did provide me with good insight on the admissions process and how race is tied into that. It will definitely be useful in writing my educational autobiography paper. This book reads more like a collection of complicated case studies than your typical eye opening social justice book. It definitely felt more scholarly, which makes sense considering I read it for a class. Overall, if you are profoundly interested in the admissions process to prestigious universities and how race and ethnicity are tied into that, while seeing specific student examples, or you are writing a paper about this topic, I would recommend this book. But if you are interested in learning more about race and inequality because you are trying to educate yourself, I would not recommend. Not that this book doesn't have good information, its just set up in a way that is tedious to read.
November 19, 2017
The author interviews current college students at elite higher education institutions in the U.S. and Britain, highlighting the ways in which we are failing to educate students in our histories of inequality and systemic racism, and how this then affects the way young people think about meritocracy and the purpose of affirmative action.
From the conclusion:
“When more Americans have a better understanding of the role race has played and continues to play in our society, we will be better able to reframe how we justify affirmative action to emphasize unequal opportunities and historical exclusion, especially of African Americans...When white students understand affirmative action instead as a policy implemented for their own benefit, the moment a situation arises where they feel excluded — for example, by assuming they did not get a job or an internship owing to affirmative action, or just that they don’t feel invited when they see a table of young black students sitting together in the dining hall — they reject it.”
From the conclusion:
“When more Americans have a better understanding of the role race has played and continues to play in our society, we will be better able to reframe how we justify affirmative action to emphasize unequal opportunities and historical exclusion, especially of African Americans...When white students understand affirmative action instead as a policy implemented for their own benefit, the moment a situation arises where they feel excluded — for example, by assuming they did not get a job or an internship owing to affirmative action, or just that they don’t feel invited when they see a table of young black students sitting together in the dining hall — they reject it.”
April 28, 2018
"When more Americans have a better understanding of the role race has played and continues to play in our society, we will be better able to reframe how we justify affirmative action to emphasize unequal opportunities and historical exclusion, especially of African Americans. That is, we need to emphasize why calibrated evaluations of merit should consider not just class but also race, and why collective merit is not the only—or even the most important—reason we need affirmative action."
May 4, 2023
So much good material and a good idea but it was hard to ignore some errors about the British admissions system that made it hard to read in a British context. I'm keen to learn from American models of racial inclusion but I wish the author had included more material on the Oxford admissions model and some ways in which it isn't directly comparable to Harvard and Brown's. I feel like this is a less useful book for British readers to read.
December 18, 2019
Read (parts of this) for SOC-275.
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