Harmony Hill is a sophomore from Duke University majoring in Public Policy. An earlier version of this piece was originally written for Policy Choice as Value Conflict taught by Professor Gunther Peck.
An administrator at my high school told me that Duke accepted me because I’m Black; a friend at Duke told me I was accepted because I came from a low-income background. Neither of them framed these opinions as attacks on me, but the message was the same—whether because of race or class, my success was not mine. The debate between race and class-based affirmative action continues to dominate the national conversation about tackling inequities in admissions, all while the role of privilege persists more or less undetected. Instead of debating how to weigh class versus race as admissions criteria, we must recognize that the two aren’t mutually exclusive—both affect opportunity and access. Privilege, whether racial or economic, dictates opportunity. Opportunity matters in college admissions—the power of nepotism and legacy means that admissions are far from a perfect meritocracy even in the absence of racial and economic affirmative action. Affirmative action is intended to level a historically unfair playing field—not unfairly redistribute opportunities. Allowing privilege to flourish while eliminating affirmative action is hypocritical and reinforces systemic inequality.
We must use a distributive justice framework to examine and tackle the hypocrisy of affirmative action and privilege. This framework appropriately focuses on the allocation of resources and opportunities. Donations, legacy admissions, and access to elite preparatory education often dictate the likelihood of entry to elite four-year colleges, perpetuating class and race-based privilege—affirmative action, despite its mixed record, attempted to mitigate these inequalities and ensure that historically marginalized students had an equal opportunity. John Rawls’ theory of distributive justice claims that the use of social and economic disparities in access to sought-after goods are only justifiable if they benefit the least advantaged. Eliminating affirmative action while maintaining structural privileges contradicts this idea. If meritocracy is the goal, policies should continue to target existing inequalities. Now that affirmative action was declared null and void by the Supreme Court, legacy admissions remain as the greatest obstacle to fairness in college admissions.
Affirmative action has proven to be a critical tool for addressing inequality in education, correcting disparities in standardized testing, providing accessible resources, and overcoming historical marginalization. Family wealth is linked to standardized test outcomes—a 2015 analysis by Insider Higher Ed showed that students from families earning under $200,000 had the lowest average SAT scores, while those earning over $200,000 had the highest. By 2022, the College Board revealed that an even more sizable percentage of test takers (independent of performance) came from higher-income families: the top income quintile (over $110,000) had 28% of test takers, and the second-highest quintile ($80,000-$110,000) had 18%. This is due to privileged students’ access—costs, time, and support. Students in low-income areas often attend schools lacking AP courses, experienced teachers, and comprehensive college counseling, making an already cutthroat competition for university admission even harder. Although the College Board pushes for lower-income school districts to support AP courses, economically disadvantaged students struggle disproportionately to succeed in class and on exams.
Racial wealth disparities remain staggering. Federal Reserve data show that the median Black household possesses only 10% of the wealth of the median White household. In 2019, Black households comprised 13.6% of all U.S. households but only 4.7% of the nation’s total wealth. Black and Latino students are more likely to attend underfunded schools with fewer AP courses and lower-performing teachers. Beyond academics, admission to top institutions is often a matter of networks. Wealthier students have social capital built into their preparatory institutions, giving them career and college advising that less affluent and minority students lack. If admissions policies respond to class without race, they ignore the racial discrimination that still impacts economic mobility, school quality, and access to opportunity. Meanwhile, focusing exclusively on race neglects the tremendous hurdles imposed by poverty. Framing the debate as a choice between race- and class-based affirmative action has dominated the discourse around affirmative action. For example, Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, argues that focusing on economic diversity and not racial preferences would achieve true diversity and reduce inequalities within colleges. This framing sets up a false choice between two paths to distributive justice, dismissing the more fundamental issue of privilege, which is generally not sufficiently covered in this kind of discussion.
While affirmative action is scrutinized, preferential treatment of the rich remains accepted. For instance, legacy admissions, wherein the children of alumni receive preferential treatment in the admissions process, disproportionately advantage wealthy applicants at elite schools. Similarly, Ivy League athletic recruitment for “country club sports” favors premier prep schools over public schools, maintaining class privilege. Donor influence also impacts admissions (think about Jared Kushner’s admission to Harvard after his family donated $2.5 million to the school). Such systemic advantages rarely receive the same scrutiny as race- or class-conscious admissions policies that increase opportunities for disadvantaged students. Partly, this is because such practices are embedded within the status quo and few elites are comfortable with questioning how meritocratic the meritocracy really is. This cultural discomfort with overturning privilege has created high levels of inertia in elite America; after all, it is easier to oppose affirmative action than to dispute a system long favorable to those who wield influence.
The counter-arguments against affirmative reaction are sound and legitimate. Critics argue that affirmative action lowers meritocracy standards, favoring race-conscious admissions over more “deserving” students with better academic records. However, a pure meritocracy presumes equal starting points —far from the case. Wealthier students have remarkable access that artificially inflates their “merit.” In 2019, Opportunity Insights found that students from the top 1% of income earners are 77 times more likely to be admitted to an Ivy League school than those from the bottom 20%. If elite education access is skewed toward privilege, rejecting policies that promote equity reinforces systemic inequality.
Opponents of race-based affirmative action may also claim that the practice breeds racial resentment by favoring certain racial groups, creating the impression of unfairness among students who don’t benefit. However, this stance privileges the discomfort of the privileged over the disadvantage of the, well, disadvantaged. Instead, individuals uncomfortable with affirmative action should be encouraged to reflect on why they feel this way. It is likely because they are not feeling the benefits of the privilege they have grown accustomed to. Eliminating affirmative action does not eliminate racial preferences in admissions—it continues the unspoken racial advantages wealthier applicants have long received.
Lastly, many argue that class-based affirmative action should replace race-based initiatives because economic status is a more accurate measure of disadvantage. While class is an obstacle to opportunity, it fails to account for the additional obstacles students of color face.. Racial discrimination in hiring persists regardless of socioeconomic status. A study found that applicants with “White-sounding” names received 50% more callbacks from employers than “Black-sounding names,” showing that racial disparities cannot solely be attributed to economic disadvantage. This bias likely extends well beyond the professional market—college admissions officials, consciously or unconsciously, may also carry racial assumptions that inform how they interpret an applicant’s performance, background, or writing. A system that entirely disregards race in favor of class ignores the structural inequalities created by centuries of racial discrimination.
Despite its intended goal of redistributing access within an exclusion-based system, affirmative action has routinely been misinterpreted as lowering the bar for admission. The issue is not affirmative action, but rather the fact that racial and economic privilege dictate opportunity. Opposition to affirmative action ignores these privileges, favoring the preservation of comfort over the pursuit of equity. The debate should not pit race- and class-based initiatives against each other; both are essential, and must be addressed simultaneously. An equitable system acknowledges that class and race are critical for distributive justice, and birth privilege should not determine opportunity. Yet privilege is often defended because it feels natural to those who benefit from it—it is invisible, inherited, and rarely questioned. To pursue equity, we must reflect on why privilege is defended while opportunities for the marginalized are removed.
By Harmony Hill
