Re: the view that race-based affirmative action mostly benefits wealthy students of color... [View all]
I've actually read that race-based affirmative action on an individual level helps students of color from poorer backgrounds MORE than it helps more affluent ones both because of the escalating financial cost of going to college in recent years as well as the fact that solidly middle-class/upper-middle class or above students of all racial backgrounds ALREADY have a significant advantage over working class and poor students in terms of having better educated parents and being far more likely to live in (comparatively, at the very least) financially households with two parents present who are married and have higher incomes and at least some measure of job security, as well as being more likely to live in neighborhoods with less crime, concentrated poverty, and low-performing public schools. All of this "cultural capital" absolutely matters in respect to young people's educational, economic, and overall life prospects.
That being said, it's plausible that students of color from more affluent and higher-status family backgrounds will as a group disproportionately benefit from race-based affirmative action, but as I indicated above I suspect that this has less to do with race-based affirmative action in and of itself than the broader fact that higher-status students of ALL racial and ethnic backgrounds are a lot more likely to both go to college in the first place as well as graduate from college, period. Doesn't necessarily seem like the best argument against this policy, IMHO.
What are your thoughts on this admittedly quite controversial topic? 
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