Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America

Dalton Conley shows how factoring parental wealth into a reconceptualization of class can lead to a different future for race policy in the United States. As it stands at the end of the 20th century, affirmative action programmes primarily address racial diversity in schooling and work - areas that Conley contends generate paradoxical results with respect to racial equity. Instead he suggests an affirmative action policy that fosters minority property accumulation, thereby encouraging long-term wealth equity, or one that - while continuing to address schooling and work - is based on social class as defined by family wealth levels rather than on race.