Race vs. Class: The False Dichotomy

Article: "Race vs. Class: The False Dichotomy"

By SHERRILYN A. IFILL

I don't have a conclusive position on affirmative action, but the two things from this editorial that spoke to me are that:

1) Race and Class are often pitted against each other as if we can or should only examine one issue at a time.  

2) On the contrary, because of how interrelated the issues are, I do believe that we need to be working on multiple fronts at a time... and that to do so doesn't necessarily have to mean that we're diluting our efforts or that we're not acknowledging the relative importance of the issues.

What we might learn from the decades-long (and painfully incomplete) experience of desegregation is the need to deploy multiple efforts to address a chronic problem. In the context of higher education, that menu of efforts should include considering income (if not wealth), as well as an aggressive campaign to raise the quality of K-12 public education.

I know that these points - particularly the second one - seem fairly obvious, but it's one that I've had to grapple with a lot myself this year, since I tend to want to work on issues in a linear, hierarchical fashion.  And unfortunately, real life and circumstances doesn't work like that.