should be available and affordable to anyone with the drive and the inclination to go, but
we also need community colleges to work with employers to help them identify the skills
they need and to develop certificate programs employers trust and will therefore hire
from. Such programs will also provide paths for formerly incarcerated people, points out
Damon Phillips of Columbia Business School, who developed the ReEntry Acceleration
Program (REAP) at the Tamer Center to enhance the job prospects of people who have
served their sentences.^10
A shift away from an exclusive focus on college is a transgressive suggestion in both the
black and white communities. In the black community, Phillips points out, many African
Americans have been taught since childhood that they need to be twice as good to get
half as far, which has led blue-collar blacks to value education more than whites do.^11 To
question the indispensability of college is controversial, Phillips discovered in the course
of his work at REAP. It’s controversial in the white community, too: white elites’ belief
in the indispensability of college is integral to their belief that their success reflects a
system that rewards the best and the brightest—them.
But providing a solid future without college is important, because when people lose touch
with their hopes, they give way to their fears. No one is at their best when they’re afraid.
If you don’t like the ugly face of fear, the only effective antidote is to provide hope by
providing opportunity.
My own most fervent hope is to communicate one key message: if you care about climate
change, or abortion rights, or immigrants, or mass incarceration, you’d better care, too,
about good jobs and social dignity for Americans of all races without college degrees.
Because if you don’t, racialized economic populism is what you get.
Joan C. Williams
Hangzhou, China
March 2019
Preface