Law Commons^™

Place, Not Race: Affirmative Action And The Geography Of Educational Opportunity, Sheryll Cashin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The discourse in America about segregation is dishonest. On the surface, we pretend that the values of Brown v. Board of Education have been met, although most of us know in our hearts that the current system of public education betrays those values. In this essay, I reflect on how residual, defacto segregation and the stratified architecture of opportunity in our nation contribute to the achievement gap that has made race-based affirmative action necessary. Despite the Supreme Court's compromise decision in Fisher v. Texas, affirmative action is on life support. As this essay goes to print, the Supreme Court has …