A socialist perspective

Joseph Kay and Patrick Martin bring up an interesting argument in their article, “Affirmative action and the right to education: a socialist response.”  They offer a few statistics on the increasing costs of tuition for public universities around the country.  Combined with the slowly decreasing number of grants given to low income familites for education, this creates a system in which upper class families have better opportunities to eduction, assuming that there is a large percentage of minorities in the lower class.  Kay and Martin argue that the increasing cost to universities allows the wealthy majority access to higher education, leaving the poor minorities out.  This argument made by Kay and Martin influences us to realize the continuing need for affirmative action.  If the system in which we live insists on building more barriers for minorities’ access to higher education, then this shows the importance of affirmative action in the admissions process in order to compensate for the set backs faced by minorities.

However, Kay and Martin also go on to state their opposing opinion to affirmative action.  As socialists, they wish to eliminate the ruling class and argue that affirmative action just contributes to the polarization of the classes.  They claim, “Affirmative action not only fails to overcome the problem of racism, its discriminatory character inevitably exacerbates racial divisions and pits white and minority workers and youth against each other in the struggle for a completely inadequate number of jobs or educational opportunities.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/aa1-m03.shtml