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I worked for a large, first-ranked law firm in NYC for a number of years. We recruited black students very, very heavily, although only from the "best" schools. Virtually none of the men could pass the bar exam on the first try. Finally, after one guy had gone through five tries, we had to institute a three-strikes-yer-out policy. We paid for Bar BRI courses (which most of them started but didn't finish), writing courses (which most of them didn't even take), and everything imaginable to get these guys through. PLus they had terrible work habits, objected to every assignment as being beneath them (first year assignments for anybody are essentially just the stuff that paralegals find too boring to do), and couldn't get along with the other attorneys.

The odd thing was that the black women we had did just fine - in fact, they had not really required a boost of any sort, because if you looked at their grades, their high school activities and background, they could have competed with anyone, using any standard.

The other odd thing is that most of our black male summer associates and first-years were not from poor households. In some cases, their own parents were attorneys (and remember, these parents would have grown up and even gone to law school BEFORE affirmative action).

As for Hispanics (of whom we had very, very few), in many cases they didn't pass the bar exam the first time, but they almost always passed on the second go. Most of them were not native speakers of English, and also came from families where they were the first person in their family to attend college or even graduate from high school.

In other words, affirmative action created a strange mentality among black male recipients in particular. But I never did figure out why. Any suggested solutions to this mystery are welcome.

I spent time practicing in more than one top tier NYC firm, and my experiences were quite similar: black men were (with two exceptions out of 40-50 I knew who were post-affirmative action - there was one exceptional black partner I knew who as a '50s Harvard graduate and very competent) dumb as stones and marginally competent or worse, black women (with one exception who was dumber than a stone) were competent or better. Hispanics were very rare, and did not fit any stereotypes.

Interestingly, the two exceptionally competent black men both came from very poor backgrounds in the rural South and had had to work like navvies to get into college, through college and through law school. Most of the incompetent black men went to very top law schools, very top colleges, had parents who were college graduates. The black women were from varied backgrounds, the one real clinker had two parents who were college graduates.

The odd thing was that the black women we had did just fine - in fact, they had not really required a boost of any sort, because if you looked at their grades, their high school activities and background, they could have competed with anyone, using any standard.

The "phone" company hired lots of black women. Most were intelligent, hard working people. It also gave the company a double checkmark on the women and minorities hiring objectives. One of my engineering aides was a very bright black woman with an MBA. There was never any question in my mind that her accomplishments were strictly based on merit.