Posted on 03/20/2008 10:26:08 AM PDT by KayEyeDoubleDee
Top Student: What Kind of Minorities Do Firms Want?
By: David Rubenstein
Barack Obama, a Harvard Law School student
Photograph: Robert Lieberman
The Chicago Reporter
Issue 221
July, 1990
The last thing that Barack Obama will have to worry about next year when he graduates is job offers. Obama finished his second year at Harvard Law School this spring and has been elected to lead the Harvard Law Review, a prestigious position traditionally reserved for a top student.
"It's a great time to be a young black law school graduate - if you're from Harvard and in the top quarter of your class," said Obama. "But the point is that there are a lot of talented young minorities who may not have been able to go to the top schools. For example, a lot of minorities go to state schools due to financial constraints.
"Until the minorities who are going to the good but not the most prestigious schools, those who are doing a good job, who are highly competent and have the intelligence and the energy to do terrific work - until those people are looked at and hired in significant numbers - I think you are going to continue to have serious recruitment and retention problems."
Before going to law school, Obama spent four years in Chicago, working at the Developing Communities Project on the South Side. Currently, he is a summer associate at the firm of Hopkins & Sutter in Chicago. Last summer he worked at Sidley & Austin.
"Certainly, a lot of large frims are interested in hiring more minorities," he said. "The issue you confront is: What kind of minorities are the firms looking for? I certainly wouldn't have a hard time finding a job in Chicago. I have all the right credentials."
Even firms that are making an effort to recruit minorities - and there still are not many of them, Obama said - are reluctant to take a chance on students who do not have the top credentials. It has been said, Obama noted, that it may be time to ask if minorities are getting the same right to be "mediocre" as white males.
- D. R.
why does he feel that he has to “identify” ?
he is a “bi-racial” guy, but one would never know i
Incredibly elitist
Should read:
Certainly, a lot of large firms are interested in hiring more minorities
You are correct. He seldom ever, brings up his white side of the family............unless something goes wrong and he wants whitey on his side.
Incredibly elitist
Yeah, there are several things I'd like to say here, but I'm not sure what the Admin Moderator rules are for commenting on Obama - I don't want to get in trouble for saying something a little un-PC.
Do'h so do a lot of whities....
Well yes, in the white community—including Ashkenazi Jews—he’s not going to get an article written about him in the local paper for being in the top quarter of his Harvard class.
He’s identifies as a black guy.
He puts all of his baggage on his white relatives the same way his pappy dumped him and his mother and moved on in life.
It’s the white man’s burden to play by the rules, solve the real problems, and fund everyone’s projects.
The reason minorities go to state schools is solely b/c they lack the funds? It’s not grades or academic performance huh?
Sounds like Wright’s ranting that the reality is, racism lowers test scores. If everything were truly ‘equal’ Africans would just pwn the white man.
“It has been said, Obama noted, that it may be time to ask if minorities are getting the same right to be “mediocre” as white males.”
It would seem they do now.
I heard someone call him a nig-tey one time.
Black (step granny) paraded for the media.... Ol’ Whitey granny hidden away for shame.
Hey Obama you are the Race issue and you are playing yourself... Oh yeah good call on dissing Janice Rogers Brown’s confirmation ... How would Jeramiah Wright put it... Another Whitey keeping a good African sister down.
I was thinking about him today in relation to his being biracial.
I am beginning to believe that he is embarrassed that he is biracial.
What he does not understand is that if he were 100% one or the other race, he would not even be in this race to white house.
In 1990 Barack was already expert in saying only what his audience wanted to hear. He is just a slick carnival huckster.
Welll ... I know for a fact, that if you want to be the first (because it had never been called one, per "rev." Wright .. ) ... you can't call the bwitch a n!663r.
I had that one pulled in about .00000002 of a second.
I am beginning to believe that he is embarrassed that he is biracial.
####
I think this has been a problem his whole life.
In Hawaii, probably less than anywhere else, because so many residents are multiracial there.
In Indonesia, his mother put him in a school where the language of instruction was Indonesian. He got teased! As if no other elementary school kids ever get teased.
When he came to New York to attend Columbia U. he was essentially a foreign student in continental US.
I want to know why he chose to settle in Chicago after graduation from Columbia.
I would guess it is because he wanted a career in politics!
We should call him “Chicago pol Obama” whenever his name is mentioned.
It certainly was convenient to be able to declare yourself just “black” and ignore your white heritage. I doubt he would have gotten the position had he just left “black” out of his creds.
What a supercious pompous ass Obama is!
I bet he got beat up a lot when he was a kid. Not for being half-black....for being arrogant, snobbish, and hifalutin’.
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