Sheryll Cashin Place Not Race Summary

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Savannah StineMr. HamiltonAP Language and Composition30th October 2017“Place, Not Race: A New Vision of Opportunity in America” With and Against the GrainWith the GrainThe introduction from Sheryll Cashin’s book “Place, Not Race: A New Vision of Opportunity in America” rightly suggests that the primary barrier to students and higher education is not related to their ethnicity, but rather their geographical location. Cashin shows the difficulty that the college admissions process presents to qualified white Americans compared to their minority counterparts. She continues by noting the existence of a ‘perception gap,’ a misunderstanding between races that prohibits any fair affirmative action to correct the education system. Cashin also laments …show more content…

However, Cashin is correct when she brings to light how race bias, in particular, can prevent potential students from attending certain colleges based on the color of their skin. She uses Abigail Fisher–a student applying to the University of Texas–as an example, explaining that the applicants who got in before her on a premise that relied only on the color of their skin “violated her right to equal protection under the Constitution” (713). Fisher’s constitutional rights had been violated because she was not viewed equally compared to other applicants. Cashin is right to assume this when all the applicants had similar test scores but were not chosen out of merit, causing Fisher and other white Americans like her to work harder for the same results as African Americans, Latinos and other …show more content…

Considering the inequality caused by this bias, Cashin is correct when she argues that college acceptance should not be based on race to provide a fair admission process to everyone who applies.This race bias found in education is an obvious example of the perception gap that Cashin identifies. She appropriately recognizes that this gap is mostly responsible for the lack of affirmative action taken to benefit those in poverty-stricken locations. Cashin proves that African Americans and the white majority are not seeing eye to eye, explaining that “it is hard for non-blacks to see blacks as disadvantaged and needing affirmative action when examples of black success are ubiquitous, from Obama to Jay Z” (717). Because different ethnic backgrounds have different opinions on how issues of race should be handled at the federal level, they will typically disagree. Therefore, no decisions regarding affirmative action will be made, and those in poverty and class-segregated areas receive no

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