The Talented Tenth Meets the Twenty-First Century: Young, Gifted and Diverse in the Post-Affirmative Action Era

Abstract In the wake of the Supreme Court's dismantling of affirmative action policies in higher education in its SFFA v. Harvard ruling, this review essay offers a detailed explication of the relevant themes Camille Z. Charles, Rory Kramer, Douglas Massey, and Kimberly C. Torres analyze in “Young, Gifted, and Diverse: Origins of the New Black Elite.” Taking DuBois's conceptualization of the “Talented Tenth” as their starting point, the authors present a combination of quantitative and qualitative research to examine the experiences and aspirations of Black students who matriculated to elite colleges over a decades-long period. This analysis expands Charles et al.'s intersecting themes of social mobility, colorism, and model minority discourses, situating them within a broader discursive field that includes the relevant historical and contemporary sociopolitical contexts as reflected in the Court's majority and dissenting opinions.