Privilege Shapes Progressive Education Choice

Black Americans are far more supportive of school choice than affirmative action

Letter to The WSJ. 

"Jason Riley is right that Democrats and their teacher-union allies often claim to champion disadvantaged minority students while defending an education system that leaves those same students trapped in failing schools (“School Choice Is a Winning Issue for Republicans,” Upward Mobility, May 13).

But there is another political irony here. Black Americans are far more supportive of school choice than affirmative action. In YouGov’s 2024 Cooperative Election Study, about two-thirds of black Americans said that their state should provide “school voucher subsidies for families to send their children to private or charter schools.” Yet less than one-third of white Democrats supported expanding the kind of school choice favored by black voters.

Democrats talk constantly about white privilege, yet one of the clearest examples occurs inside their own coalition: white progressives defending a public-school monopoly less favored by minority families than by teachers’ unions. Apparently, some forms of privilege are more politically inconvenient than others.

Michael T. Hartney

Fellow, Hoover Institution"