Writing on the Chronicle’s Innovations blog, Richard Kahlenberg observes that it was a bad week for both Elizabeth Warren and affirmative action. He senses that lots of people think the idea that you deserve some special treatment because you might be one-thirty-second Cherokee is ridiculous. Naturally, though, Kahlenberg sees a bright side here — for his pet project of “class-based affirmative action.” You see, Warren’s dad was a janitor.
Raise your hand if you think it’s silly that a law-school graduate should be get special consideration because of some distant ancestry, but perfectly reasonable to give it because she grew up in a working-class family.