Affirmative Action: Too Little, Too Much, and on the Wrong Track

The recent debate in the Supreme Court is reinvigorating analysis of affirmative action; Justices Sotomayor and Thomas have both weighed in on the extent to which they felt their achievements were invalidated by others’ assumptions of unfair advantage. What remains, among other sobering statistics, is an enormous gap in wealth between whites and blacks. In part because of the housing crisis, the median net worth of white households is 20 times that of black households. (The mean net worth of whites is 3.7 times that of blacks.)