When I was in college (some 12 years ago), I walked into a conversation between two friends of mine. We were all DJs at the student-run (as opposed to the NPR affiliate) station. To put it as indelicately as possible, the white guy was quizzing the black guy what it was like to grow up in "the hood" in St. Louis. This went on for a couple more minutes, and then the white guy left to go back to the booth. The black guy looked at me, laughed, and said, "I didn't have the heart to tell him I grew up less than a mile from where he did, way out there in the suburbs. My mama would have killed me if I had gone downtown at night." For me, this is the crux of the educational affirmative action debate--a debate that won't be finished no matter what the Supreme Court decides this week.

Those opposed to using race as a criterion in admissions say that such corrective actions are no longer necessary and that they hurt deserving white and Asian students. I agree with part of the first argument--that there should come a time when there is no need for such programs. The second part of the argument is impossibly silly. Unless you want to write for television and aren't the spawn of a famous, rich or powerful family (in which case you'd better get an undergraduate degree at Harvard, Yale or Princeton), your choice of college or graduate program will have much less to do with your future success than your ability and work ethic. I would imagine that this bootstrap philosophy would resonate with most "reverse discriminationists."

Those in favor of using race to help winnow the admission pool say that corrective measures are still necessary to ensure a diverse pool of students. I agree that diversity in the student body of a university (or smaller graduate school program) is desirable. I also agree that without using race as a criterion, selective schools would be somewhat more white and Asian. The problem is that using race as a factor ensures a more homogenous pool of students if you look at socio-economic backgrounds rather than race. The black and Latino kids who get the affirmative action slots are overwhelmingly middle-to-upper-class. Poor kids from urban schools (be they white, black, green or purple) are woefully underrepresented at all levels of higher education.

You may recall the flap stirred up last year by the University of North Carolina's summer reading choice for incoming freshmen. The chancellor chose Approaching the Qur'an, by Michael Sells, as a way of helping students to understand the complexities of the post-9/11 world. Bible-thumpers and self-proclaimed "patriots" sued and lost. The optional beginning-of-semester seminars weren't packed, but the school's best estimate was that about half the kids read the book. Good for them.

Duke University also has a summer reading book for incoming freshmen. This year, that book is Savage Inequalities, by Jonathan Kozol. Those in the bookselling trade remember this as the book which moved the editors of Publishers Weekly to forego the usual ad on the cover in lieu of a letter which urged all readers to read (and more importantly, sell) the book. It may have been published more than 10 years ago, but the book's ideas fall directly into the debate about affirmative action in higher education.

During the late 1980s, Kozol traveled around the country to take a first-hand look at conditions in some of the country's poorest urban schools. The problems were, and are, immense. A declining tax base has left little in the coffers in districts where the state doesn't "normalize" spending per student. And even that figure can be deceiving, as most urban districts use aging (and flat-out dilapidated) facilities which cost much more to maintain than buildings built more recently. Teacher turnover is high and student interest is low. Kozol hands out plenty of blame to everyone; he doesn't see more money or, somewhat presciently, more testing as complete solutions. Some kids don't want to learn, and their parents don't care. These parents need to be educated as to the benefits of education, and maybe then they'll push their children to do better in school.

Affirmative action in the workplace is becoming increasingly unnecessary. We're not at the point where the government should stop keeping an eye on things, but most employers seem to have come to realize that diverse workplaces do have their benefits. There are the occasional shocking anomalies, but the fact that these incidents are shocking shows how far we've come. Most well-educated people--regardless of gender or race--are able to find jobs that fit their skills.

And so it seems to me that education is the most important component of affirmative action. But while I do believe there is still room for such considerations at the college level, I'm beginning to think that elementary and secondary education is where the money and programs need to be targeted.

Yes, there are programs like Head Start which help out plenty of kids. But if their parents don't encourage them, these children still will drop out or muddle through once they reach high school. Urban school districts (and even urban-suburban ones like we have down here in my corner of the New South) need more people in outreach positions who can work with parents and help them to help their kids. Because for every parent who is openly hostile to education for whatever reason, there are two who desperately want their children to learn but don't know how to make that happen. There is some truth to the stereotype that black kids think doing well in school is tantamount to "acting white." It's also true that any kid who excels in school gets razzed by those who don't. I ignored such taunts because my parents stood behind my achievement. I can't imagine being derided by my parents for achieving in school--something more than one friend of mine (all of them white, as it happens) had to overcome.

I don't know how to "fix" the culture of ignorance that pervades certain sectors of our society--sectors defined more by economic status than race. TV commercials from the Ad Council won't do it. Teaching to the test won't do it. Preaching won't do it. The outreach to children and parents must be slow and subtle, but constant nonetheless. And most of all, this outreach must be funded. These are actions that must be affirmed if we are to remain a functioning society. Continuing to lift up the middle-and-upper classes while ignoring those below will only serve to tear us apart.

Jon Worley grew up drinking powdered milk and fielding phone calls from the bank. But when your parents have college degrees, you get one too.