I understand the outrage of racial discrimination in this case, but I'm saddened over the lack of outrage over Harvard's self-described "Z-List" students who get into the school solely based on their family's money and power. No one is suing Harvard over the fact that you can buy your way in. We've come to accept that money and legacy power provides access and opportunity regardless of merit. If that more fundamental…
I always thought that historically, the elite schools were for the children of the elite; the idea behind letting "scholarship students" in is that if the children of the elite are going to run the world (and they always have in the past) it's really in everyone's best interest if we set them up so that they build relationships with some people who are competent and will have to work. I think the fact that there does…
Based on what I read several years ago, social mobility in the U.S. used to be significantly higher, such as in the 1980s, and I know the U.S. used to define itself on social mobility - the Land of Opportunity and of Liberty, where a person is free to do and accomplish what they can through merit and hard work. I'll add that the U.S. long has been run by children of the working and middle class, such as Clinton, Obama, and LBJ, as well as elites (Trump, Bush, Bush, Kennedy, etc.). (I'm not cherry-picking; I just don't remember the economic backgrounds of Reagan, Carter, Nixon, etc.).
Of course it still was very imperfect, but my point is that we shouldn't think that the way things are is the way they've always been.