By striking down both affirmative action in university admissions and Joe Biden’s bid to forgive a portion of students’ loans, the Supreme Court has handed the president a chance to reset his party’s priorities
“Lemme tell you guys something,” Mr Biden replied with sudden intensity, according to “What It Takes”, by Richard Ben Cramer. “There’s a river of power that flows through this country.” Most people did not even know about this river, while others could only stand by its banks and gawk. But a few Americans, Mr Biden continued, got to swim in the river of power their whole lives, and go wherever they wanted to. “And that river”, he concluded, “flows from the Ivy League.
Over the course of Mr Biden’s career, for the best of reasons, diversifying access to the river of power, and to college in general, became core ambitions of his party. Yet something went wrong with this project: diversifying access turned out not to be the same as democratising it. Barack Obama incarnated the vision of the multiracial meritocracy that affirmative action could yield, whether or not he benefited from it, yet this meritocracy began courting hypocrisy by reinscribing itself.
“For too many schools, the only people who benefit from the system are the wealthy and well-connected,” he said, noting that children of the wealthiest 1% of families were 77 times more likely than those of the poorest 20% to attend an elite university. “The odds have been stacked against working people for much too long.
Student debts can be crushing. Relieving them is a goal cherished within the party. But Mr Biden’s plan would not fix the college-financing system. And in trying to give hundreds of billions of dollars to people who invested in their long-term prospects, Democrats lay themselves open to Republican attacks that they want to transfer money from the working class to elites, which should properly be understood as the Republicans’ stock in trade.
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