Should Affirmative Action Be Raced-based Or Class-based?

Affirmative action in America,with race-featured reaching-out programs,has been dividing America for almost half a century.Despite the fact that the race-based affirmative action so far has brought justice and compensation to some specific groups of people and also acted as an important force in promoting demographic diversity in employment and education,the further development of policy has now been seriously hobbled by overwhelming controversies.Reverse discrimination,benefiting the wrong people and stigmatizing the beneficiaries,are strong enough to provide the soil for the growing support for class-based affirmative action.As an alternative,the class-based program can theoretically cure most of the problems inherent in race-featured one.It is more implicit and more individual-oriented in comparison with race feature.By including poor whites under its umbrella,it can also quench the anger of majority white.However,in practice,its effect in achieving the racial diversity in education is not as good as expected.Compared with the race-based affirmative action,the class-based alternative also requires more administration and implementation cost.By making a comparison between race-based and class-based affirmative action,the thesis tries to find a way out for this still-needed but controversial policy.In America,it is impossible to talk about race-based affirmative action without talking about class,and vice versa.The absence of either in constructing an out-reaching policy like affirmative action is doomed to bring unceasing controversies.In this sense,affirmative action is not a single choice question.The best solution to this double whammy may be the preference system which can harmonize race and class issues in such a way that it can provide both internal logic and social legitimacy.