Summary Of The Similarities Between Anderson And Lawrence Blum

Education is important to individuals because it opens the door to rewarding careers, and places those individuals in elite positions of responsibility and leadership to serve others. However, one particular race dominates these rewarding careers. Elizabeth Anderson and Lawrence Blum address this in different ways. Anderson takes a top-down approach and the focuses on fostering racial diversity in order to make elites more diverse, thus furthering the public good. In contrast, Blum takes a bottom-top approach, and his focus is on the lack of opportunity for minorities to attend state schools, much less the elite ones. Blum presents the stronger argument as it focuses on the more urgent problem: the struggle for minority students to receive …show more content…
Anderson argues that segregation enables the advantaged to provide goods for themselves, facilitate negative externalities for the disadvantaged, and perpetuate social segregation. She asserts that segregation deprives elites of the same knowledge, making them ignorant of the problems of the disadvantaged. Moreover, this lack of knowledge makes the advantaged less effective in their jobs. She uses the example of how a doctor’s lack of cultural knowledge of an immigrant community could lead to misdiagnosing immigrant patients. Anderson states that the advantaged lack diverse first person knowledge. This can have a major impact where public policies require different personal perspectives. Therefore, integration in higher education will enhance the qualifications of elites by giving them diverse perspectives. Education needs equality of social relations where individuals interact with each other based on dignity and respect, not an equality of resources. Anderson ultimately stresses that everyone deserves fair educational opportunities, not fair …show more content…
However, he points out that state support per student from 1987 to 2012 has declined from $8,500 to $6,000 (adjusted for inflation). The incomes of many minority families make them dependent on state support for their children to obtain higher education. Anderson’s argument centers on the lack of diversity in elite higher institutions. However, Blum shows that minority students’ opportunities to attend state schools have been diminished, making diversity at elite schools of a lesser concern. The elites may be more financially capable, but this does not mean they are better than students who are not as financially capable. This diminishes the quality of students at elite higher institutions, where capable students are phased out of the process due to a lack of