Hear Me Out: Affirmative Action Failed Poor Black Kids

On today’s episode of Hear Me Out… almost affirmative. 

We don’t yet know what the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action is going to do, tangibly, to college admissions — or how long those impacts will last. But, based on past experiments, we have a decent idea. And many advocates say the implications here are urgent and dire.

But affirmative action might not have been the great equalizing force that a lot of people believe it was. 

Bertrand Cooper, freelance journalist and policy researcher, joins us to elaborate on his belief that poor Black kids were failed by affirmative action. 


If you have thoughts you want to share, or an idea for a topic we should tackle, you can email the show: hearmeout@slate.com

Podcast production by Maura Currie

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