About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

66 Emory L.J. 1049 (2016-2017)
The Deserving Poor, the Undeserving Poor, and Class-Based Affirmative Action

handle is hein.journals/emlj66 and id is 1080 raw text is: THE DESERVING POOR, THE UNDESERVING POOR, AND CLASS-BASED AFFIRMATIVE ACTION KhiaraM Bridges* ABSTRACT This Article is a critique of class-based affirmative action. It begins by observing that many professed politically conservative individuals have championed class-based affirmative action. However, it observes that political conservatism is not typically identified as an ideology that generally approves of improving the poor's well-being through the means that class-based affirmative action employs that is, through redistributing wealth by taking wealth from a wealthy individual and giving it directly to a poor person. This is precisely what class-based affirmative action does: it takes a seat in an incoming class (a species of wealth) from a wealthy individual and gives it directly to a poor person. This Article attempts to reconcile this apparent contradiction. Interestingly, engaging in this project of reconciliation reveals very little about conservatism, but a lot about class-based affirmative action. This Article proposes that class-based affirmative action enjoys widespread support from people across the political spectrum because it is imagined to benefit the deserving poor. Unlike the undeserving poor, the deserving poor are those who cannot be blamed for their poverty; their impoverishment is not due to individual behavioral or character flaws, but rather to structural or macro forces well outside of an individual's control. Class-based affirmative action enjoys bipartisan political popularity because it is imagined to benefit these respectable poor people folks who are deserving of a leg up in the admissions competition and deserving ofprograms designed to assist them, even if those programs involve a direct transfer of wealth from the wealthy to the poor. However, that political conservatives and liberals alike currently imagine class-based affirmative action to benefit the deserving poor is a reason for alarm. Alarm bells should ring because, throughout history, the categories of the deserving and undeserving poor have been racialized and, frequently, * Professor of Law, Boston University. Thanks to Jack Beermann, Kris Collins, Alan Feld, Gary Lawson, Linda McClain, Kevin Outterson, and Kate Silbaugh for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Thanks as well to Mike Garry and Aaron Horth-and Gert Reynaert-for excellent research assistance. I am also indebted to Jenna Fegreus, Ellen Minot Frentzen, and Jennifer Robble in the BU Law Library for helping me with my numerous research requests and for making my scholarship better as a result. All errors remain my own.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most