A New York Times book review by Orlando Patterson gives us the following biographical details on Justice Thomas:
Pin Point, where he spent his first six years, comes as close to a scene of rural desolation as is possible in an advanced society. This is black life in the rural South at its bleakest, in which the best hope of the law-abiding is a job at the old crab-picking factory. It is in this sociological nightmare that a 6-year-old boy, by some miracle of human agency, discovers the path to survival through absorption in books. Born to a teenage mother, abandoned by his father when he was a year old, plunged into the even more frightening poverty of the Savannah ghetto, Thomas, along with his brother, was eventually rescued by his grandparents.... Coastal Georgia is one of the few areas in America where a genuinely Afro-English creole — Gullah — is used, and Thomas grew up speaking it.
Let's take race out of the equation for a moment, and take a white person with a similar background: born to a teenage mother, abandoned by the father, grew up in desolate rural and urban environments, grew up speaking creole dialect instead of standard English, raised by an illiterate grandfather... does anyone seriously doubt that such an individual should be given a break on, say, LSAT scores, in admission relative to the typical Yale Law student? (At least when I was there, the prototypical Yale Law Student grew up in either Manhattan or a well-to-do suburban area, attended a fine, often private, high school, had professional parents, often big-shot lawyers, and spent a bunch of money on Princeton Review or Kaplan to prepare for their LSATS; a fair fraction of my classmates had been planning their law school careers, and in some case political careers beyond that, since at least high school--one woman I met, whose family has donated millions to elite universites, said "I knew I was going to Harvard or Yale from the time I was three years old.").
So if Thomas doesn't attribute his getting into Yale to racial preferences, as the review contends (I'm not sure this is true), you can't blame him. ANY sensible admissions policy would have admitted someone of his background who had achieved the successes he had achieved, regardless of race.
Though I hate to sound like a leftist, to a large extent schools like Yale Law both create and perpetuate the advantages of the elite. Engaging in race-based affirmative action puts a fig leaf of egalitarianism on the whole thing, which allows the overwhelmingly liberal members of the elite to feel good about themselves, while still overwhelmingly giving new advantages to folks of already-advantaged backgrounds.
Put another way, Thomas may be an affirmative action success story, but if so, it damns the schools for not looking much harder for Clarence Thomases of all races.
BTW, I don't recommend the review itself, which has too many cliches and inaccuracies--e.g., at least on the mainstream political spectrum, Rush Limbaugh isn't "far right," he's a rather standard-issue conservative; Thomas did not say, as Patterson claims, that "beating a prisoner is not unconstitutional punishment because it would not have appeared cruel and unusual to the framers," he said that extralegal beatings are not "punishment" within the meaning of that word in the 8th Amendment, and that they may violate other constitutional provisions; and so on.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Merida and Fletcher on Clarence Thomas:
- Clarence Thomas and "Affirmative Action":
Key word sensible, you are assuming that such admissions are dictated by sense. To put another way, you are thinking on how admissions should be, or perhaps could be, instead of what really is. If they abandon racial prefferences (which they probably should, moving to a different situation based off real "success" in life), do you believe that they will actually achieve their goals of admitting the best students who found "the most real success in life."
That's not true, but I'd like to think it.
Of course, a skin-based preference system neither creates more Thomases nor does a better job of assisting the ones that exist than a plain old fair go.
You mean schools should cut a break to applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds who will then do what they can to eliminate any breaks for future applicants?
"I hate to sound like a leftist...."
Gee, it's tought to admit liberals might actually be right from time to time....
He's actually neither. He a media-whore who doesn't give a darn about the truth or accuracy in his show, and blovines for ratings.
Yeah, Clarence Thomas got to the Supreme Court and people still discount him as "that black guy who wouldn't have even gotten into law school without lowered standards." Obviously more racial preferences are needed.
In my view, the key difference between Prof. Bernstein's "sensible" policy and the race-based affirmative action which Erasmus advocates can be boils down to preference for selectivity versus specificity.
A specific policy aims to ensure that only the disadvantaged are given extra consideration. Another way to say it is that it aims to minimize the number of individuals given extra consideration despite not having experienced significant hardships. If sometimes the truly disadvantaged are not extended special consideration, a preference for specificity says, well, nothing is perfect, and the important thing is to ensure that as few as possible of the undeserving are extended extra consideration.
A selective policy aims to ensure that all of the disadvantaged are given extra consideration. If special consideration sometimes extended to those who are not truly disadvantaged, a preference for selectivity says, well, nothing is perfect, and the important thing is ensure that as many of the disadvantaged as possible are extended extra consideration.
The studies showing racism that Erasmus mentions show that some blacks are disadvantaged on the basis of their race in some times and places. A policy of race-based affirmative action seeks to redress this disadvantage in as selective a way as possible. But, obviously, the studies do not prove that all blacks are disadvantaged in all their endeavors because of racism. That is, race-based affirmative action policy may not be specific.
Obviously, the ideal is both selectivity and specificity. But this seems difficult to achieve in practice.
Which results in the sorry spectacle of someone of a protected class who got chauffeured to private schools getting preference over an Asian kid who had parents who came to the US as destitute, refugee, boat people.
Why do "progressives" love a fundamentally unjust system that produces results like that?
Let's play a little logic game.
A) Rush Limbaugh believes Abu Ghraib was "nothing more than a bunch of fraternity hijinks" (I'll have to take your word for it; I've never listened to Limbaugh's show.)
B) David Bernstein describes Rush as a "mainstream conservative."
From A and B, you deduce
C) "Mainstream conservatives" believe Abu Ghraib was "nothing more than a bunch of fraternity hijinks."
Impressive logic there, Steve.
- Alaska Jack
Whoa! You're so right. All the "progressives" just haven't thought about the fact that one sad background story is favored over another. You totally made everybody rethink their positions. I mean, it's really that progressives haven't thought of that - don't think for a second that it's already factored into the decision calculus.
Here are a few reasons:
-- Because the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act forbid the latter but not the former.
-- Because, as others have said here, black does not always equate with disadvantaged, whereas disadvantaged equates with disadvantaged.
-- Because giving a break to the disadvantaged does not perpetuate a government sponsored spoils system/grievance system for a particular caste of persons. In fact, by helping someone who is disadvantaged, you make it far less likely that his/her children will need the same break. (Should Thomas' children be granted affirmative action?)
George Will once pointed out that in certain Olympic sports like skating and gymnastics, the points awarded are based not only on the quality of execution but on the difficulty of the routine. Someone who flawlessly executes a very simple routine may well lose out to somehow who does a more difficult routine very well but not perfectly. Degree of difficulty counts.
Same in life. A straight-A student who comes from a privileged family and had an education from elite schools is less impressive than someone from a poor background who went to second rate school, yet perservered and did well, but not flawlessly. One can easily support a school giving a preference to the latter but not the former and still oppose race-based affirmative action.
All the "progressives" just haven't thought about the fact that one sad background story is favored over another.--Kovarsky
I, too, would ask the same question as TJIT not because I thought that "progressives" hadn't thought about the perverse results of the system that they defend, but rather because I find the defense of that system to be woefully inadequate (if not outright intellectually dishonest). In any case, the emphasis has shifted away from disadvantage as such in favor of the conveniently protean and dubious concept of "diversity."
What is hypocritical is to take advantage of an illicit benefit while accusing another of doing so. Amerikans are very confused on this topic.
Indeed, we guerrilla libertarians denounce nanny-welfare state theft while gaming the system ourselves, and proudly announcing our actions, so as to bring about the early demise of the nanny-welfare state.
Because the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act forbid the latter but not the former.
That's an interesting position, for at least a couple reasons. Reason 1, it's my understanding that the reconstruction congress enacted its share of laws favoring blacks. Reason 2, the CRA was signed by the same president (LBJ) who established race-based AA by exec order.
Assuming I'm right on the facts, then fidelity to public-meaning originalism --- the variety to which Thomas claims fealty -- would suggest there are clear grounds for believing race-based AA to be harmonizable with both the 14th Amendment and the CRA.
I'm not an expert on the history of either, but I do that there are liberal originalists who've made a strong case that Thomas's position against AA is especially hypocritical for this reason. Their argument is pretty straightforward: Thomas acts the originalist part when he likes the political results, and not when we doesn't.
Whether these critics are right or wrong on the facts, theirs is a serious critique --- more serious, for example, than simply pointing out that a person has personally benefited from a program that s/he opposes.
The article implies that Thomas is a hypocrite for opposing affirmative-action policies that he himself benefited from. This is idiocy: one may oppose tax policy favoring deduction for spouse and family, for example, and still take advantage of the misguided policy, without being a hypocrite.
I think there's some point to this argument, but not nearly as much as jimbino thinks. I might, for instance, think that the first-time DC homebuyer's tax credit is a silly policy but also claim it (as I once did). But I would argue that to claim the credit and not be a hypocrite would require at least something for me. In particular, it would require that I not think the credit is morally wrong.
Suppose that Thomas's opposition to AA is more than of the simple "I don't think the Constitution" allows it variety. Suppose that he finds it morally abhorrent. Well then I think he has a definite moral obligation not to benefit from it. If deliberately and knowingly benefitting from policies that we think are morally wrong is kosher, then what would be hypocritical in any meaningful sense? (Note that I am not asserting details about what Thomas knew at the time of his admission to Yale law, nor about whether his position is moral, rather than simply originalist constitutional in its foundation -- I'm making a point about what *would* be the case under particular counterfactuals.)
Bored Lawyer, your point about blacks being “disadvantaged” is a semantic game. Growing up poor is not per se being disadvantaged any more than growing up black is per se being disadvantaged. Both being poor and being black require people to overcome obstacles because of that status. Some have it worse than others, and it's at times hard to figure out who really needs it. (I’d rather grow up poor with a strong family structure and a high level of innate intelligence than grow up white, middle class, not inherently bright, and without a strong family structure. I suspect the latter person actually faces more life obstacles.)
Most objections to affirmative action seem to be on the way they are implemented and then that practical objection is translated into per se opposition to affirmative action. (I’m against affirmative action because look at that program at X elite school! It was unfair!)
I’d prefer we craft a sensible affirmative action policy that takes into consideration a wide variety of factors -- with an emphasis on the poor, but also a policy that is honest about the fact that blacks still face wide-spread discrimination, particularly in the south.
LBJ's Executive Order 11246, "...prohibits federal contractors and federally assisted construction contractors and subcontractors, who do over $10,000 in Government business in one year from discriminating in employment decisions on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin."
Contractors are also required to "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, color, religion, sex or national origin. "[emphasis added]
You will note that the language of the Order does not condone preferences for anyone, but requires treatment "without regard to...race".
Of course, you can say this was because the individuals had been enslaved, not because they were black, but the two were pretty congruent. There's lots of historical analysis here, some suggesting that blacks who had not been slaves could receive the benefits, which would be plausibly consistent with the badges and incidents theory.
This is contested turf, but it is clearly wrong to say that the amendments at the time were unambiguously color blind
On the LBJ thing, I erred in referring to the EO (tho many certainly do interpret the text you're referring to as supporting today's understanding of AA, precisely b/c at the time the race-based discrimination that occurred was toward blacks). I should have referenced the speech he gave 3 months earlier, in which he said
Regarding the Civil War amendments, my point was not the text of the amendments but rather the subsequent actions of the Congress that enacted them. Jack Balkin discusses this issue better than I can in this post from a few years ago (as well as his replies to Stuart Buck's responses). In particular see Balkin's discussion of the different kinds of rights that, he argues, were understood to exist at the time.
In any case, there are plenty of federal laws that discriminated on racial grounds after the enactment of the CW amendments. One view of those laws is that they were always unconstitutional, but were allowed to persist nonetheless until the SCOTUS struck them down. An alternative view (this would be Balkin's, I think, based on my reading of his "Abortion and Originalism" paper and numerous blog posts of his) is that (1) those laws were constitutional when enacted -- even after the 13-15 amendments -- because the forms of discrimination they permitted or enshrined weren't understood by the 13-15 framers to be out of bounds, but (2) as society's understanding of the principles undergirding the 13-15 changed, these laws *became* unconstitutional.
This is a pretty straightforward application of Balkin's original principles originalism. One might reject this theory of construction, but smarter, better-informed people than I are pretty sure that the historical facts suggest that the colorblindedness reading of the CW amendments just wasn't the one to which the framers subscribed. My only original point here was that that fact makes Thomas's (and to a slightly lesser extent Scalia's) original-expected-application originalism (Balkin's term) essentially indefensible.
Thirteenth:
Fourteenth:
Fifteenth:
Nothing in any of those Amendments suggests a benefit for anyone of any race.
What the Freedmen's Bureau did has nothing to do with the Amendment's language, IMHO.
My studies do not support your conclusions.
What black seat? In 1967 President Lyndon Johnson appointed Thurgood Marshall, who as an advocate had served with distinction as the field general of the movement to end de jure segregation and who later ably represented the United States as Solicitor General, to the Supreme Court. Since then, presidents of both parties have nominated eighteen persons to fill fifteen vacancies on the Court.
During the past forty years, exactly one black person has received serious, "short list" consideration as a prospective nominee--and that one was for the seat vacated by Justice Marshall. That is a de facto quota system (maintained by presidents of both parties), and Uncle Thomas was eager to fill the quota of one.
When Thomas's confirmation was in doubt, he played the hell out of the race card--recall his overheated, "this is a high tech lynching" hyperbole. (The only thing that Clarence Thomas has in common with the victims of lynching is that some of them also may have copulated with a white woman.)
Apparently, the only affirmative action programs that Mr. Thomas has regarded as appropriate are those that discriminate in favor of Republican toadies whose first name is Clarence and whose last name is Thomas.
And saying that what the contemporary Congress did has nothing to do with the content of the amendments
is completely contrary to a long line of originalist Court interpretation that not infrequently refers to the actions of the first Congress as evidence of the meaning of the Constitution.
" Rush Limbaugh isn't "far right," he's a rather standard-issue conservative."
'He's actually neither. He a media-whore who doesn't give a darn about the truth or accuracy in his show, and blovines for ratings.'
Did Randy just make up ''blovines''? And the rest of it, too? Or does he have any proof of his wild-eyed, libtard conjecture? Facts are the basis for truth and accuracy. What facts, exactly, have Limbaugh stated as facts, but which were subsequently proven to be wrong? And what percentage were 'wrong' -- if any at all -- among all facts stated? [Note that facts are not the same thing as opinions].
BTW everybody, in the interests of honesty, we should call Affirmative Action by what it actually is: Affirmative Racism.
-dk
''Uncle Thomas was eager to fill the quota of one.''
And:
''If there were a shred of integrity about Mr. Thomas's opposition to 'affirmative action', why did he accept appointment to the single black seat on the Supreme Court? ''
Because, as Thomas made crystal clear, he did not consider his accomplishments to be the result of Affirmative Racism. Libtards, on the other hand, believe deep in their confused hearts that blacks can not succeed without the help of benevolent Caucasians.
Harry Edwards was on Clinton's short list, but when the deal with Hatch was struck, fell from consideration, IIRC.
BTW, this is such an absurd and obnoxious stereotype that deserves to be called out for its pure callousness.
Yes I did. There were Mexicans, Chinese and Europeans who were caught up in slavery in the USA prior to the Thirteenth Amendement. Their enslavement was as effectively abolished as was the enslavement of those of African descent. Thus, badges or incidents of slavery were also abolished irrespective of race or color by the Thirteenth Amendment.
Yes I did. There were Mexicans, Chinese and Europeans who were caught up in slavery in the USA prior to the Thirteenth Amendement. Their enslavement was as effectively abolished as was the enslavement of those of African descent. Thus, badges or incidents of slavery were also abolished irrespective of race or color by the Thirteenth Amendment.
That phrase was used by Senator Trumball, the author and principal sponsor of the 13th Amendment, before any court did so.
jonah and frankcross have it exactly right regarding the Civil War amendments. There simply is little evidence that those who drafted and enacted them expected a color blind reading. They clearly expected and intended, for example, to use race as a factor in school assignments. They expressly said so.
that very may well be true. My original quote was that affirmative action should give a break to those who come from an disadvantaged background, and I said nothing about race. However, Thomas would, (correct me if I'm wrong) eliminate ALL such breaks for people based on disadvantaged backgrounds, which in my book makes him a jerk as well as a hypocrite.
As for Rush, I coined the word blovines from the word bloviator. Rush has distorted the facts and made up others so often as to not need recitation here. If you really think Rush is a great font of truthfulness, well, no arguments will sway you otherwise, and I won't get into it.
I agree with your last sentence. But I am not an "originalist". Here is the reason for my attitude on that issue:
After Brown in 1954, the hue and cry from the segregationists opposing it featured the argument that even in abolitionist Boston, segregation of the races was recognized as legal at the time of the ratification of the Civil Rights Amendments. The segs cited Roberts v. City of Boston, an 1850 case from the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts that foreshadowed Plessy v. Ferguson, holding racial segregation did not imply inferiority for African Americans. Therefore, the argument went, separate but equal schools should have been ok in the South in 1954, especially in light of Plessy and its progeny which had been federal law for over a half century.
I agreed then, and agree now, with the premise of the Brown case that in the area of public education, segregation of the races has no place under the principles of the Civil Rights Amendment, especially in light of the results of the Civil War. The plain fact was that everyone knew that African Americans were considered inferior to whites by the Southern States, both in fact and law, and that was the reason African Americans were expected by southerners and required by the laws of their states to go to the back of the bus and to attend inferior schools. This, to me, violated principles of equal protection of the laws and due process of law for all citizens.
Roberts is no more persuasive to me today than it was to me in 1960 when I argued in my senior paper that it should not have had the influence it did in Plessy.
Thank you for the courteous reply.
TJIT
The "liberal elite". This would be funny if so many people didn't believe it to be true.
Obviously if the schools could identify those poor students who will achieve as much as Thomas they should admit them. The question is whether they should admit more poor/disadvantaged students if by their best statistical measures are much less likely to succeed. I'm inclined to say they shouldn't for two reasons.
1) Lowering the average talent level at your school not only hurts the students who didn't get admitted but everyone else at the school as well. Classes will be dumbed down, students won't work as hard to say up with classmates and so forth. Additionally, apart from having a prestigious name on their transcript it isn't clear to me that going to a school that is more challenging than what they are ready for will help disadvantaged kids on average. Anecdotes about this aren't very useful because they will show us the small percent of kids who benefit while failing to communicate the many who fail out after going to a school that is too challenging.
2) School is not about an exercise in fairness but an investment in future generations and productivity. The amount of benefit accrued by offering an underprivileged kid a shot at college is going to be swamped by the potential benefits of progress we would lose by not using our educational resources on those who will become the most educated/useful as a result. Giving your average student a bit more knowledge or expertise won't make that much of a difference for society but making a genius or brilliant scientist just a bit smarter will have a much larger effect.
Now I don't have any objection to people getting a free ride. If I thought we had good reason to believe that affirmative action would improve society MORE than other ways to use those resources I'd be for it despite the racial basis or the fact that some people are getting a free ride. However, why should we believe that affirmative action will benefit society? Does anyone have any compelling studies or even a very suggestive argument.
Some attempts I've heard:
1) Affirmative action will let us benefit from the untapped talents of minority groups.
This doesn't make any sense. We don't think it's genetic inferiority that makes poor whites do worse at math or on the SAT so why should we think that poor minorities offer any more compelling of a talent pool than poor people in general? In fact by displacing people who aren't starting for a disadvantage affirmative action should actually reduce total productivity.
2) Whether or not it's rational people tend to identify themselves with those of a similar skin color. By providing examples of successful minorities affirmative action will both encourage the next generation to greater achievement and reduce racial tensions.
This is the theory I came up with after a great deal of thought and the only one I find plausible. I just don't know if the effect will really be that large. But even if the effect exists we should have evidence that AA increases the number of minority success stories before we jump on the bandwagon. Does getting into a harder school make minorities more or less likely to graduate? Would it be better to have a larger number of moderately accomplished role-models or a few very accomplished ones?
Also what about the effects on people's estimation of their own ability of knowing they might have benefited from affirmative action. Thomas is one of the most accomplished men in America and he still has people doubting that he really got where he is on merit. That has to discourage people. Also by making sure that the minorities whites meet are on average less talented than the whites (even if it's just because they had a touch childhood) it could increase racism not to mention the resentment it stirs up.
3) Reparations for Slavery/Fairness.
This just doesn't make any sense. One can owe an individual something and an individual can deserve some decompensation but what does it mean to say a group deserves some benefit? Do people deserve compensation based on the net effect of the bad acts on their position (does it even make sense to ask if the blacks alive now would have been better off if slavery had never been practiced in the US?) or compensation based on the amount of suffering their ancestors underwent? Should people who can prove facts about their ancestors get more compensation?
In what sense can you even say one child deserves not to be poor or in bad schools more than another? The kid whose parents are poor because they are lazy isn't any less deserving of college or a job than the child whose parents were poor because of discrimination?
Also in what sense is it important that one be a member of the aggrieved group? Should blacks who have white ancestors have their benefits cut proportionally? Does finding out that one was adopted or your mother cheated change the amount the government owes to you? Or is it instead based entirely on your skin color no matter how it came about?
In short there just isn't a coherent moral theory that can make sense of the notion of owing something to a group. If you think you can offer one try.
But even socioeconomic affirmative action has its tricks. Putting people in schools where they can't compete at all is a mistake. There are always other schools, and somebody who sinks at a hard school may have no trouble swimming at an easier school. But if a group of students all show academic talent in regular classes, I have no problem cutting a break for those students who can't afford expensive test prep or who can't put together a stunning list of extracurricular activities because they have to work every day after school.
For the record, I attended an Ivy League college and a top 20 law school. Most of the students I met in both places were somewhere between upper working class and regular middle class. No affirmative action for most, plus no legacy admissions or special treatment on account of families who donate millions. There's nothing wrong with asking most members of minority groups to compete with students like this.
Privileged students at top schools really do need to check their assumptions about who their classmates are. It's hard to tell social class when everyone is wearing jeans and the college sweatshirt, and a charitable instinct that seems natural to the trust fund set may be very annoying to people who hold three jobs to help pay for school.
Instead, we go about it bass ackwards, and assume that "race" is a proxy for "a deprived background." This assumption becomes less and less true with each passing second.
Instead of using the controversial and corrupted metric of race, why not focus of deserving individuals from economically disadvantaged backgrounds? It is more fair (and it also will automatically identify disproportionally more Blacks and Latinos, if that's what you're into).
I don't think your generalizations about the "liberal elite" are terribly fair.
For my part, I don't support race-based affirmative action, and I don't support admission to elite universities as a matter of privilege or class entitlement. In fact, I agree with you that some account should be taken of the adversity a person has overcome -- not necessarily in the form of an automatic thumb on the scale for anyone who isn't well off, but admissions officials ought to (and I suspect they do) accept that someone without resources who attends a school without resources might not fare as well on the SAT or LSAT.
Then again, maybe I'm not a true member of the "liberal elite." But darn it: I was trying so hard to fit in.
I'm sure there were people at Harvard Law School when I was there who had been waitlisted (or at least shortlisted) for admission at birth. But I don't think they were there in such significant number as to overcome the rest of us whose mommies and daddies weren't alumni writing big checks to endowment funds or even Kaplan. Most everyone I knew was a first-generation Harvard student and lawyer.
I realize that it's often difficult for "conservative elites" to reconcile their educational backgrounds to their oft-expressed contempt for left-leaning elite institutions of higher learning. Witness Justice Alito's detailed presentation about how he just didn't fit in at Princeton. How does one become appropriately credentialed without becoming ideologically tainted at the same time? I suppose you gut it out and spend seven miserable years in the Ivy League, growing ever so distant and lonely, and then you wax effusive about your feelings of alienation at your confirmation hearings.
(Of course, now there's a better way: you can go to Sweet Baby Jesus College of Law, swear fealty to "natural law" and George W. Bush over the Constitution, and get promptly installed in a high-level position in the Justice Department.)
If you truly believe in meritocracy, we should abandon the legacy system as well as race-based affirmative action. For every Clarence Thomas story the right has to offer, there is a George W. Bush story to counter it. I think we can both agree that President Bush and Senator Kennedy are both astute riders of their respective family's coat tails. Now guess which one is concerned about legacy admissions, and which one preoccupies himself with race-based affirmative action.
Henri,
College financial aid, at least, is overwhelmingly based simply on need.
Because that's really hard. Identifying race is so much easier.
Hey, I agree, affirmative action, as generally practiced today, isn't so great. It would be better to identify those kids that truly could use a leg up because they overcame so much. And I also believe that the rich kids at Yale and Princeton benefit by sitting next to someone who came from the school of hard knocks.
But even in a perfect system, you still can't account for human behavior. A kid may have overcome every disadvantage, and then falls apart when he gets to Yale. Sometimes, you just can't get the perfect solution.
The schools have various objectives: educate the best and the brightest, have a diverse student population on the theory that homogeneous schools don't adequately prepare students for the real world, their legacy and standing in the educational arena, and so on. Some of these objectives conflict, and they have to choose and balance them. However they choose, some people will be losers.
I think most schools honestly are trying to do their best. But it's always easier to have bright-line guidelines. This way, no one gets in trouble for following the pre-approved guidelines. Even if you did away with all guidelines, however, you would still have to review every student closely and eliminate most of them.
Whatever the system, it is clear that a certain percentage will fail, some will drop out for other reasons. Some will graduate and become terrific successes, whereas others will graduate and make nothing of their lives. Most will be somewhere in between. There is simply no magic formula that meets everyone's objectives AND garantees success for all.
Perhaps, then, the emphasis shouldn't be on how to make people winners, ie, getting everyone into the 'best' schools, but how to have people avoid being the losers. And by that, everyone should be entitled to a good school up to their senior year in high school, and everyone who wants to furhter their education should be entitled to an adequate school for their chosen vocation.
So I guess it all comes down to the work ethic and the drive for success. That's hard for schools to teach, but maybe they can. If they can, ALL schools should.
Is it fair and just that Thomas is on the Supreme Court? I don't know. I'm sure there are other people in the world who would make a better justice than him or any of the others. But sometimes it has to do with timing, politics, personal ambition, proirities, and so on, that determine who gets into a limited club of 9 people. But that doesn't mean that anyone who is NOT on the SCOTUS is a failure, no matter how hard they tried or wished to be on it.
Clarence Thomas did not just show up at the doors of Yale demanding to get in. Holy Cross (disclaimer: I am a graduate of HC, 1966) was an academically strong school in the days when Catholic men did not go to the Ivies but were incouraged (strongly) to go to Notre Dame, Georgetown, Boston College or Holy Cross if they were bright and good students. For a school of 2100 students it had a laudable record for entry into elite schools at the post-graduate level. In my class of 1966, for instance, 8/60 pre-meds went to Ivy League schools and all the rest got into medical school. The same was true of law and graduate schools in a period when you either went to school or were drafted.
Clarence Thomas was a little after my time (1972) but as far as I can tell the standards did not change. Grades were based on what you made in class, there was no curve, and class attendance was mandatory or highly encouraged. Recommendations were from a central committee and not from individual teachers (at least at the pre-medical school level) so your record and your abilities were less subject to personal relationships with certain teachers. There was a strong identification with principles of service and charity to others.
And it is a Jesuit school, one that had the highest ratio of Jesuits to students in the country. I doubt that he skated through.
I don't know what his LSAT scores were, but I do know that recommedations from the faculty carried a lot of weight and that Yale would have welcomed him if he were white (probably Irish), Southern, and poor with the grades he got and the school he came from. Holy Cross would not have made those recommendations based on his color alone. They paid a lot of attention to their reputation amongst the elite graduate schools and would not want to degrade that reputation by sending an inferior student on. No doubt race helped his admission to Yale, but it was not the major factor that Holy Cross used when they suggested that he would do well there.
On what evidence do you base your conclusion that Thomas is unsympathetic to people who endured similar situations?