Why is it so hard to create policies to effectively solve race inequality? - Kenan Malik

Should public policy be "race-conscious" or "colour blind"? Should it target the specific inequalities faced by minority groups or treat all citizens equally without any reference to individuals' racial and cultural backgrounds?

The contrast between these two approaches has often been seen as that between Anglo-Saxon multiculturalism and French assimilationism, the one "based on the right of ethnic minorities, of communities", the other "based on individual rights", as Marceau Long, then the president of France's Haut Conseil à L'Intégration, put it in 1991, adding that the Anglo-Saxon approach, unlike that of the French, was that of "another way of imprisoning people within ghettos".

Thirty years on, we can see the issues as less given to simple binary oppositions. Two recent high-profile events illustrate this complexity: the US supreme court's decision to strike down affirmative action and the riots that ripped through France after the police killing of teenager Nahel Merzouk.

The supreme court's verdict that Harvard's race-based admission policy was illegal has led many to fear that the progress of African Americans in higher education will now stall. Yet, as the African American writer Bertrand Cooper observed even before the decision: "The reality is that for the Black poor, a world without affirmative action is just the world as it is - no different than before."

Why? Because while affirmative action has improved prospects for middle-class black people, it has left untouched the lives of working-class African Americans. By 2020, the percentage of African Americans admitted to Harvard stood at almost 16% - higher than the proportion of black people within the US population. Black students in Harvard are, though, anything but representative of the African American community.