Posted on 08/26/2007 12:14:09 PM PDT by george76
Have racial preferences reduced the number of black lawyers?
Three years ago, UCLA law professor Richard Sander published an explosive, fact-based study of the consequences of affirmative action in American law schools in the Stanford Law Review. Most of his findings were grim, and they caused dismay among many of the champions of affirmative action--and indeed, among those who were not.
Easily the most startling conclusion of his research: Mr. Sander calculated that there are fewer black attorneys today than there would have been if law schools had practiced color-blind admissions--about 7.9% fewer by his reckoning. He identified the culprit as the practice of admitting minority students to schools for which they are inadequately prepared. In essence, they have been "matched" to the wrong school.
Students who attend schools where their academic credentials are substantially below those of their fellow students tend to perform poorly.
in elite law schools, 51.6% of black students had first-year grade point averages in the bottom 10% of their class as opposed to only 5.6% of white students.
Under current practices, only 45% of blacks who enter law school pass the bar on their first attempt as opposed to over 78% of whites. Even after multiple tries, only 57% of blacks succeed.
The rest are often saddled with student debt, routinely running as high as $160,000, not counting undergraduate debt. How great an increase in the number of black attorneys is needed to justify these costs?
The problem is that the admissions officer's job is to enroll students, not to draw the risks of failure to their attention. Indeed, in some cases, the officer may be frantic to enroll minority students in order to comply with the stringent new diversity standards ...
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
I’ve heard this before, I think from Ward Connerly. A student is accepted to UCLA because of their race and they fail because their academics are not at UC level. However, if they went to community college and then Cal State Univ LA, they may have received a degree because they we’re academically performing at that level.
I think that Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams are perhaps THE GREATEST MINDS in the conservative movement.
When Mr. Sander and his co-investigators sought bar passage data from the State Bar of California that would allow analysis by race, Mr. Kidder passionately argued that access should be denied, because disclosure “risks stigmatizing African American attorneys.”
Revealing the rate of failure would stigmatize black law grads who “chose public service” as government employees after failing the bar exam, and that is A-OK with me.
When I was in pharmacy school, several of my professors would give only multiple choice tests. They would openly admit it was to avoid being hit with a discrimination suit in grading, as the test would be 100 percent objective with no subjective grading involved.
The above and Bill Cosby are and need to ( in the future ) continue to lead.
The husslers like Jessie and Al along with the white liberals are destroying many dreams. Too many kids are buying into the easy lies.
It will take many generations to reverse these scams.
It is also, IMHO, the perfect example of the subtile bigotery of the Left.
In a nutshell: You do no seek, much less insist upon, special considerations and lower(ed) standards for those you conside your equals. Your superiors don't need them, your inferiors do. 
He started out as a Marxist.
I guess he woke up. I just wish more people would, efore this whole country goes to you know where...
Good point about Bill Cosby. There are others in the entertainment industry in the younger generation who are also emphasizing personal responsibility and achievement. They have a lot to work against, though.
In other words, it's working as planned. Just as Davis-Bacon laws were instituted in the 1920s in order to keep the number of black highway workers to a minimum.
Don't you just love Liberals.
Milton helped him wake up.
“Three years ago, UCLA law professor Richard Sander published an explosive,
fact-based study of the consequences of affirmative action in American
law schools...”
1. I pray this truth-teller had tenure before this publication.
2. And since when did a “fact-based study” get real acceptance by the
liberals that actually run most universities/colleges...
Bill has often had issues personally, but he is excellent on the big points.
More leaders like Lynn Swann, Condoleeza Rice, J.C. Watts, Reggie White ( Packers ) will make a difference.
Milton Friedman turned me into an economic conservative, too.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a person’s having accepted ideas that seemed plausible, and then changed his mind when the ideas were proved wrong. The problem is with people who won’t change their minds when they’re proved wrong.
Affirmative action is a good example: there’s nothing practically (as opposed to philosophically) wrong with the idea that giving preferences to X-type of people will help X-type of people. However, to cling to the idea once the overwhelming evidence proves the contention is false is either evil or deranged.
I agree - and people at the grassroots working to expose minority students to lifestyles based on work and responsibility, rather than handouts and victim-culture. For example, in our "ScoutReach" program for inner-city boys, they often find that the boys don't know any men in their community who are married, raising their children, holding jobs, and paying their bills.
The Democratic Party, and the American left generally, has been the party of discrimination throughout their entire history. The only thing that changes for Democrats are the groups that suffer the discrimination. For most of their history, it was blacks, Jews and most of Southern European heritage. Today, it’s white, non-Hispanic, heterosexual Christians males.
Blacks either have no grasp of history, or they value the racism of the left, I’m not sure which.
We are for helping others. The difference is that we want kids to learn, then work hard, and then be successful.
Liberals offer the false dream of success without any effort.
Well said!
I'm not black.
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