Formal equal access from unequal starting positions perpetuates exclusion

Evidence

Former slaves could compete formally for positions from which they were hitherto excluded as slaves and now excluded for the most part by (relative) lack of education, training, capital, accumulated wealth, and social standing. Likewise, though in different ways and to different degrees, with former colonial or segregated subjects and apartheid’s discarded. Equal access to unequal resources and possibilities from positions of unequal preparation and power ultimately entails a third-class ticket to nowhere. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 115

Categorization

• XREF: Directly echoes the critique of legal-formal equality — equal access to unequal resources — that animates the diamond-trade extralegal work and Claude Steele’s stereotype threat research. — connects to: Formal equality in exchange masks how the class relation is constituted — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1363; School choice worsens inequality when access prerequisites are unequal — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 957; Court-ordered desegregation of public spaces produced resegregation and private alternatives, not integration — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 250 (+3 more)
• SEED: Essay angle: the ‘third-class ticket to nowhere’ as a framework for reading hollowed-out affirmative action debates decades on.
• DEEPTHINKING: The phrase ‘equal access to unequal resources… entails a third-class ticket to nowhere’ is a compact, reusable analytic axiom about formal equality.