Sheryll Cashin’s new book, Place, Not Race: A New Vision of Opportunity in America, argues that place-based affirmative action provides a race-neutral approach for helping disadvantaged students as well as bringing diversity to elite colleges and universities.
WASHINGTON — It’s not surprising that, as a former law clerk to the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and daughter of civil rights activist parents, Georgetown University law professor Sheryll Cashin supports the use of affirmative action in American higher education.
Rather than defend the practice of race-conscious affirmative action that helps underrepresented minorities gain admission into highly selective colleges and universities, Cashin instead pushes for affirmative action that’s based on structural disadvantage, or place, that a student has to overcome to attain a high-quality education.
Cashin’s new book, Place, Not Race: A New Vision of Opportunity in America, argues that place-based affirmative action provides a race-neutral approach for helping disadvantaged students as well as bringing diversity to elite colleges and universities.
Although the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on July 15 upheld the use of race in college admissions in the Fisher v. Texas case, there’s not much optimism that race-conscious affirmative action has a long-term future in American higher education. Among those who are advocating for race-neutral alternatives to race-conscious admissions practices, Cashin in Place, Not Race offers a vision of how colleges and universities can achieve racial and ethnic diversity while providing opportunity for disadvantaged students regardless of their race or ethnicity.
“I believe in affirmative action. I just want it to be better and fairer. I want to insulate it from legal and political attack, but I also want to help strivers who really need the help,” Cashin told Diverse.
There’s little disagreement that the practice of race-conscious affirmative action has been on the decline since the 1990s, as the federal courts have limited its use and states have acted to prohibit public universities from considering race. Over nearly two decades, the proportion of four-year public colleges that consider race in admissions has fallen from more than 60 percent to about 35 percent. Just 45 percent of private colleges still consider race in admissions.
Countering race-based affirmative action
