Opinion Focus

Washington Post opinion columnist Eugene Robinson was online Tuesday, May 15, at 1 p.m. ET to discuss his recent columns and the latest news.

A Question of Race vs. Class (Post, May 15)

The transcript follows.

Archive: Eugene Robinson discussion transcripts

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Eugene Robinson: Hi, everybody. I'll be here for an hour, as usual, to talk about anything and everything. Today's column is about affirmative action, picking up on Barack Obama's remark that his two daughters are "pretty advantaged" and raising the question of whether income should be a factor as well as race. I'm sure we'll get into that subject, but there's lots more to talk about today as well. How can we miss Paul Wolfowitz and Alberto Gonzales if they won't go away?

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Baltimore: I am a certified member of the Black 500 (affirmative action babies who went to the Ivies in the '70s and '80s) as is my spouse. Our children attend private schools. Though I would appreciate my kids having "a leg up" in admissions, I can't in good conscience say that they have been disadvantaged. Their experiences in the current American society are far different from my own at their age: certainly not the same barriers. But those barriers still exist for black children who lack the legacy of academic success. Affirmative Action still is needed and has benefited society as a whole -- perhaps it just needs to evolve?

Eugene Robinson: Maybe it is evolving. I know a goodly number of college admissions officers, and I'm quite sure that they would do more in terms of admission and financial aid for a disadvantaged minority student than they would for your kids. As the society becomes more unequal, affirmative action has to be about more than just race. But I don't think we're at the point where race can be ignored.

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Arlington, Va.: It is really too early to speculate what will happen when these young girls apply to college. First, significant changes may occur in the next decade to the college admissions process. Second, their parents are clearly academics/intellectuals. As such, the girls will not have any problem attending any school they wish. Lastly, if they choose to attend their parent's alma maters, they will be accepted. More students are accepted to prestigious colleges and universities through parental legacies than any affirmative action programs. People need to know this. Stop blaming people of color for your lack of achievement. Start looking at yourself, your experiences and inherent privileges through familial relations and networking.

Eugene Robinson: That was my point.

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Rochester, N.Y.: I'm disappointed with your recent column. Of course you can always find some African-American family that doesn't "deserve" affirmative action, but that's neither here nor there: the lives of millions of African-Americans who face real prejudice has got to be more important than whether or not a a couple children "unfairly" benefit from affirmative action. You're letting the anecdote overwhelm the larger picture. I call that bad journalism and I expect more from you.

Eugene Robinson: I didn't think it was so bad. It's news that Barack Obama has opened this discussion of affirmative action. He argued both sides -- that income should be a factor, and that race should be a factor. I think he's trying to bridge the two positions somehow. My view is that race is still important and that affirmative action is still needed. But it's unproductive to pretend that there aren't many people who disagree.

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Owings Mills, Md.: I didn't have the SAT scores to get into my university of choice, so I ended up at a community college my first semester, where I was required to maintain a high GPA and get letters of recommendation from all my professors in order to transfer to the university. Another student (a Hispanic male) was in the same boat as me (I am a white female). However, he only was required to maintain a C average and needed no letters of recommendation to transfer to the same university. After about a year, he dropped out. Had he been held to the same standards, he might have been successful. Affirmative action should be about more than simply filling a quota. What are you thoughts on a more comprehensive approach to racial equality?

Eugene Robinson: I believe diversity is a key to this nation's future success. I believe we've come far in recent decades, but we still have to continue working to ensure that racial and ethnic minorities are included. Affirmative action is indeed about more than "filling a quota" -- it's about the shape of our society.

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Boston: I've read a lot about gender tipping points where if the ratio of women to men gets too high, both men and women are less likely to attend the college. In California, since the state eliminated racial preferences many elite schools are becoming predominately Asian. Do you think schools like UC-Berkeley and Stanford will reach racial tipping points, when top White/Black/Hispanic students from the east just aren't interested in going to these schools? I think part of what is lost is that having a racially diverse campus is a perfectly reasonable goal for a university, independent of "righting past wrongs."

Eugene Robinson: I agree that having a diverse campus is a reasonable and laudable goal for a university. The University of Michigan, to cite one example, has been arguing that point for years, including in the courts.

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Washington: The college issue is just one aspect of race vs. class -- I have more than 50 friends who have undergrad and grad degrees from the top 20 schools in the country, but can't get the good jobs in asset management. Pension and endowment money management does not allow blacks an opportunity. There is not a dollar of Ivy league money being managed by a black firm. Small emerging firms can't get a chance to manage money. Society will let you be their doctor and their lawyer, but when it comes to the high stakes of money, then it gets personal. What do you think?

Eugene Robinson: I'm not intimately familiar with the "high stakes of money" -- if I were, I'd have someone to do my typing for me when I host these chats. But I have heard the complaint that hungry, talented black financier-types who go out on their own find it hard to get big money to invest with them. Maybe this is a case in which we need a pioneer to break the logjam -- somebody who makes a billion-dollar bundle managing a hedge fund.

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Arlington, Va.: Hi Mr. Robinson. You raise some interesting questions. I was talking with a friend of mine about this the other day. We both are from working class families in Oregon -- a very white state -- and when she went to Brown University to get her Ph.D. I asked if she liked having more people around of her skin color. She said there was a tremendous diversity of rich kids there, in contrast to Oregon where there was a large variety of financial backgrounds but nearly everyone was white. I don't have a question, but I think this is a good thing to have a conversation about. I also think relatively well-off politicians forget that there are students who just can't afford to go to school anywhere.

Eugene Robinson: It's good for people here in Washington to remember that indeed there are a lot of people who can't afford the exorbitant cost of college. When Paul McNulty resigned yesterday from the Justice Department, everyone assumed the real reason was the scandal over the fired U.S. attorneys. But no one batted an eye at his cover story, which was that he needed to make more money because he has college-age kids. Now, I don't know McNulty's Justice Department salary off the top of my head, but it has to be north of $150,000 a year, right? That's a lot of money -- but not enough to comfortably send kids to college.

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New York: Hi, Eugene, thanks for your chats. The issue of race vs. class is thorny, particularly because many affirmative action programs have achieved their goal of helping members of minority groups elevate their economic standing in the past generation or two. Because of this success, is it fair for second- and third-generation Asians and Hispanics who are not disadvantaged economically (Ivy League graduates who own valuable homes) or linguistically (speaking American English with no foreign-tongued accents) to get minority set-aside contracts because of their last names? At what economic point do people "arrive" at equal advantage, even if their skin color or last name would appear to indicate minority status? In one-size-fits-all affirmative action formulas, it seems economic class is too often left out of the equation. Your thoughts?

Eugene Robinson: African-Americans have made great strides toward reaching parity with whites in terms of income -- with comparable education and credentials, salaries are pretty close to those of whites. But there remains a huge gap in accumulated wealth, or net worth. It seems to me that set-aside contracts are one way to give small minority companies a chance to grow.

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Falls Church, Va.: To clarify on McNulty's salary, it was listed at $165,000 per year. My Dad put my sister and I through college on a lot less than that.

Eugene Robinson: Thanks. My father and mother did the same. But going to an Ivy these days costs roughly $45,000 a year, and I'm being conservative. It's insane.

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Washington: I think your final comment about legacy admissions was right-on. I always have wondered whether or not lack-luster students admitted largely on legacy points have kept out more-qualified but not as well-connected students. There have been several articles lately about very gifted, wildly over-extended kids not getting into these Ivies: is the combination of legacy, affirmative action and other types of social compensation what's making university admissions so screwy? Maybe a little laissez faire is in order, Obama girls and otherwise.

Eugene Robinson: University admissions are screwy because for some reason our society has come to put much greater value -- including monetary value -- on going to the "right" college. These schools are flooded with huge numbers of qualified applicants, and most do not get in.

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Race and Class: As a teacher in rural area in the Deep South, most of my students were black, some white, and a small handful Hispanic. They were all decidedly low-income. As someone who grew up in a middle-income, mostly white setting, I was struck and surprised at how "alike" these kids were in terms of outlook and opportunity (or lack of it). I expected the legacy of slavery and the Civil Rights Movement to have a much more pronounced effect, but I came to understand that my students were all poor, and for them it was a much stronger defining factor than race.

Eugene Robinson: Yet for some reason, poor people haven't been joining together in effective political coalitions to effect change that would reduce their poverty. Why is that?

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Bethesda, Md.: You don't really believe McNulty's cover story about college costs? He can just borrow money now and get a high paying private sector job in January 2009.

Eugene Robinson: Like I said, the real reason is the scandal over the fired U.S. attorneys. My point was that nobody blinked at the idea that a man making $165,000 a year would feel pressed by college costs.

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Columbus, Ohio: Eugene, I understand the rationale and importance of affirmative action. However, to me the devil is in the details. Because admissions at most universities or colleges are capped, every single person who is admitted in part because of affirmative action means that the same number of people were not admitted partly because they have the "wrong" skin color or heritage. If you were facing a group of Asian and white students who were rejected from college because of their skin color, what would you tell them?

Eugene Robinson: I'd tell them that in the final analysis, colleges have discretion as to whom they admit. The most selective schools sometimes reject kids with perfect SAT scores. Why? Because they don't think the kid is right for that school, or they want the right mix (not just racially, but in terms of interests and personalities and talents) in the freshman class. Those kids who were rejected have no more claim on that slot than the kids who were accepted.

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Washington:"More students are accepted to prestigious colleges and universities through parental legacies than any affirmative action programs."

This may be true, but it is also true that students admitted because of Affirmative action programs have lower objective scores (grades and tests) than legacy admits -- look at the data from the Michigan case. The necessary preference to get to racial balance is off the charts. That said, it is beyond dispute that blacks have been disadvantaged in our society for 300 years. The time to eliminate preferences based on race has not arrived.

Eugene Robinson: Thanks, but let me add that most minorities who are admitted because of affirmative action go on to perform quite well in college. So do most legacy admits. I just saw a study indicating that the worst-performing legacies are substantially outperformed by the worst-performing affirmative action admits.

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College Park, Md.: Will Obama lose credibility as a black candidate by effectively endorsing a view that goes against a policy long-heralded by the black community (and others)? Or will he gain credibility by supporting a policy that helps all disadvantaged persons, not just persons of color regardless of socioeconomic class?

Eugene Robinson: I think he's hoping to maintain his support by endorsing continued affirmative action, and also gain new support by saying that income should be a factor.

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Hamilton, Va.: Have you seen that Jerry Falwell has shuffled off this mortal coil? Shall we have a discussion of morality and virtue and how flexible those terms can be?

Eugene Robinson: Chris Hopkins, the moderator of this discussion, just informed me that a bulletin had moved saying that Jerry Falwell had died. I haven't had time to find out any details.

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washingtonpost.com: Rev. Jerry Falwell Dies at 73 (AP, May 15)

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Oakton, Va.: What do you think of the radio personalities that CBS radio fired because of insensitive remarks against Asian-Americans? I was pretty surprised, because while most racist remarks draw a lot of fire, it had seemed to me that Asian-Americans are the one group you still can get away with of making fun of. Is this a general trend in our society that Asian-Americans be afforded the same respect as any other culture, or was it just bad timing following the visible firing of Imus and the fact it was the same company, CBS?

Eugene Robinson: Well, their timing was certainly bad. But I think we may be in a phase where certain kinds of insults are deemed off-limits on the airwaves.

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Washington: Legacy admissions have to do with these endowments that Ivy League schools are obsessed with -- if Thomas Worthington IV doesn't get into Ivy League School X, then Thomas Worthington III might be less likely to donate large sums of money.

Eugene Robinson: Very true. In fairness, a school like Harvard or Princeton would reply that it's these huge endowments that allow the schools to provide so much financial aid to disadvantaged students.

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Richmond, Va.: Yesterday, the Bush administration put on an intense lobbying effort to suppress the World Bank's report on its findings against Wolfowitz, as one means of showing its support for this man. The other day, the Bush administration again gave its unequivocal support for Gonzales. Both of these cases are about breaking the law -- or at the very least, "appearances" of malfeasance. Loyalty schmoyalty -- for an ordinary citizen, it is infuriating that the president of the United States, as the representative of what must be right in America, digs his heels in to undermine, over and over and over, those very laws he has sworn to uphold. No one seems to hold him accountable -- what gives?

Eugene Robinson: That's the question. And, alas, it will have to wait until next week. I'm out of time. Thanks, everyone, and see you next Tuesday.

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