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Study Up for 'Think': Affirmative Reaction

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Race-based affirmative action disrupts equality in the admissions process, Sheryll Cashin says.

Should colleges leave race out of the admissions equation? While support has increased for affirmative action programs in America the past several years, civil rights advocate Sheryll Cashin has another idea: schools should consider where an applicant grew up instead of the color of his or her skin. She joins Krys Boyd at 1 p.m. to discuss her new book, Place Not Race: A New Vision of Opportunity in America.

To further understand her argument, two separate excerpts from Cashin's book "Place Not Race: A New Vision of Opportunity" are available via ABC News and AlterNet.

In a Pew Research Center poll, a vast amount of Americans support affirmative action programs that increase minorities in post-secondary education. And a Gallup poll says the same.

But for many, the issue is more complex.  "Behind every success, large or small, there is a story, and it isn’t always told by sex or skin color," Tal Fortgang writes in an article refuting white privilege as the reason for his successes in The Princeton Tory.

Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas were both admitted to Yale Law School when a strong race-based affirmative action policy was in place. Their opinions of the policy highly differ.

And the affirmative action discussion has illuminated other admissions preferences. David Bernstein of George Mason University compares racial considerations in college admissions to other admissions preferences – for example, athletes, alumni, musicians, and out-of-state applicants. He notes violence as a response to affirmative action and racial or ethnic relationships in this piece for The Washington Post.

Cashin further discusses "Place Not Race: A New Vision of Opportunity" on C-Span.

Listen to Think on KERA 90.1 at noon and 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday. You can also stream the show live online.