I can't find a link right now, but I've seen several commentaries that expressed incredulity at Justice Thomas's claim that he believed that he was admitted to Yale Law School not because he was black, but because of the obstacles he had overcome (which were, to understate things, rather substantial) while succeeding in every educational environment. According to Thomas, the administration at Yale led him to believe that they were inclined to admit him because of his successes at overcoming these obstacles, and it was only later that he discovered that they and everyone else viewed him as the recipient of a race-based advantage that he obviously feels demeaned what he had accomplished.
I can't vouch for Thomas's account, but I did want to point out that it's entirely possible that Yale denied it was giving him special treatment based on race. In fact, until rather recently, as a result of publicity attendant to the drop in minority admissions at the UC law schools after Proposition 209, and the data revealed as a result of anti-affirmative action litigation brought in Texas and Michigan by the Center for Individual Rights, the leaders of elite law schools routinely denied that they used meaningful racial preferences.
Consider Dean Herma Hill Kay of Boal Hall Law School's response when she was asked on national television in April 1995 why there was "a widespread perception that the minorities who are admitted with those special considerations are the result of standards being lowered." Kay responded that law schools do not lower standards to admit minorities. Rather, when schools "'choose between two equally qualified persons,' . . . [they] pick the 'person of color' in order to 'do something about the really fundamental problem of racial prejudice in this society.'"
Meanwhile, for the entering class in 1996, the average LSAT statistics for Boalt students were as follows: Whites 168 (96.9 percentile); Asian 166 (95); Hispanic 159 (80.5); Black 155 (67).
I provide a couple of other examples of elite law schools denying or downplaying their racial preferences, including one from the Yale administration circa 1990, in this article (a defense of a constitutional right for private universities to use racial preferences in admissions).
If as late as 1995 law schools were denying their use of preferences, it's not hard to imagine they were doing the same twenty years earlier, and that Thomas believed them.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Clarence Thomas, Yale Law School, and Affirmative Action:
- Did Justice Thomas Know He Was Admitted to Yale Because of His Race:
- Frank Rich, Clarence Thomas, and the Missouri Assistant Attorney General:
This is not a rhetorical question. I haven't read the book or followed the press coverage. For all I know, admissions officers have been interviewed about their specific reasons for admitting Justice Thomas. But law schools don't normally identify particular students admitted by virtue of affirmative action programs, do they? I had thought, in fact, that this might be part of Justice Thomas's whole point about the "taint" -- i.e., that even the most qualified minority student can never prove that his or her admission was earned on the merits?
Again, I don't have a point to make. I'm just asking.
Before Gratz, I thought I was reasonably informed about admissions processes. I was shocked, though, when the University of Michigan was forced to disclose how exactly they went about undergraduate admissions decisions and we learned about the "grid" they used to tilt so greatly in favor of minorities. I liked not only the result in Gratz, but also the by-product thereof, that is exposure of the the process that the school did not want known. While 30 years before the dirty secret was the quotas that were employed by schools to exclude Jews, the secret that Michigan didn't want told about its well-meaning social engineering efforts wasn't too different.
Besides what I learned about the admissions process at Michigan (Ann Arbor vs other campuses), I learned a great deal from Dan Golden's most excellent series on the subject in the WSJ, which won him a Pulitzer Prize. There is a vulgar expression about those who think their own excrement is odorless, and it applies to many of our institutions of higher learning whose ethics may not be as sketchy as many of those serving in Congress, but which are far from exemplary. (It is doubtful that any serving in Congress are unaware of the odor of their ordure.)
OK, this may have been a bit OT inasmuch as it did not focus on Thomas's case, but I don't think it very much OT. (BTW, does anyone know what Thomas's academic record was like at Holy Cross? At least as good as the undergraduate records of the geniuses that sought the presidency in '00 and '04. Given his undergraduate record, should it have been self-evident to Thomas that Yale was lowering the bar for him academically? Does/did Anita Hill see herself as an affirmative action admit to Yale?)
Suppose, for instance, the school admits some students of all races in with scores down to 140 if they show evidence that their scores don't reflect their true ability and ability to overcome adversity. Now further suppose that blacks tend to have significantly lower LSAT scores because they face great hurdles. Then it could easily turn out that while there are whites and blacks with low LSAT scores, and even more whites than blacks with more LSAT scores, the average LSAT score for blacks could be lower than that for whites without any preferences or lowering on standards.
In other words given you are black the probability that you got into school with low lsats but other qualifications might be higher than it would be given you were white.
It's a nitpick but a fairly important one.
BTW, do you think Thomas faced "racism" in his life? Do you think it "antisemitic" to maintain quotas to limit the number of Jewish students admitted? I ask because in a recent thread (DB's about Norman Finkelstein), you made a point of eschewing these terms, saying you saw them as so freely used as to be imprecise and basically meaningless.
I mean he is opposed to the program of affirmative action to my knowledge he has never stated that given such a program exists (and will taint the perception of most minority achievements whatever you do) that you have some moral responsibility to refuse the advantages. That's like saying that if you oppose national health care because you think it creates market inefficiencies not only should you vote against it but if it passes your obligated to refuse to take advantage of the free health care it provides, i.e. you need to bear the costs but gain none of the advantages.
Moreover, what impact should the fact that Justice Thomas may have personally benefited from affirmative action have on his future views on the subject? absolutely none. Justice Thomas's personal experience has no effect on the statistics about what happens to the median black affirmative action recipient. At best he should consider himself one data point which is swamped in the data from his observations about others and any statistics he has seen about the performance of blacks after affirmative action appointment.
Most people who benefited from a program like affirmative action would develop an emotional bias in favor of the program and be unable to evaluate it objectively. If anything Justice Thomas's ability to separate what has benefited him personally and what he thinks is good policy is a great ability, not evidence of hypocripsy.
One last thing. Never underestimate the ability of people to deceive themselves into believing what they want to believe. If people can join cults, believe in ghosts and fairies, think UFOs make crop circles and all the other crazy stuff people believe why is it so hard to believe Justice Thomas might have convinced himself he hadn't received a preference?
If your grades and MCATs were not substandard, and you made it through successfully, then I see no reason for you to be troubled by self-doubt. Indeed, rather than being advantaged, it could be that you "overcame" to get in. Men were firmly in control of medical schools and not all that liberal, with the question in the minds of many being whether a woman would be taking up a place that a man might fill, and she would invest more of herself in marriage and family than in a medical career. (BTW, not so long before you applied, they used to keep our MCAT scores secret from us. I have at times thought about demanding them now, since I doubt they have a right to keep them secret, but I would feel a bit silly doing so. Time for you to stop "retrospecting" about the admissions decision in your case. You proved them right in the most unequivocal way - you succeeded.)
In Black &White On Wall Street author Joseph Jett relates how he checked the white box on his application to MIT so he could be sure he was admitted on his own merits rather than his skin color. Apparently, MIT wasn't so skilled at demographics that it could catch him.
Personally I recall applying to college in 1965 and finding no race box on some appliations. However, two of those schools required a personal interview.
So, can you tell us how Yale knew? Does anyone know, rather than simply have faith in the accuracy of Yale's racial radar?
You are correct that I recently stated the terms "racist" and "anti-Semitic" have lost meaning in our society. When a thread pertinent to that topic comes up again, I will be glad to continue the discussion.
Ohh yes, I believe in the conclusion and you are right about the greater difference being evidence. However, without more statistical facts I have no idea how much evidence, i.e., what is the difference we would expect if they didn't get preferences? Anyway it's a quibble because they pretty clearly do use preferences.
That said, to the extent affirmative action is used, it seems that Thomas would have been a prime candidate - not because of his race, but because of his background.
This is really the nub, isn't it? I don't know what Justice Thomas believes, but there are many who while they oppose race based affirmative action support adversity based affirmative action, if you want to call it that.
Why is it at all implausible that Thomas believed he was a beneficiary of the latter rather than the former? There certainly have been many cases of universities using the adverse background of candidates to boost an application.
And if so, that certainly takes the wind out of the sails of the hypocrisy charge -- doesn't it? Thomas can quite plausibly state that, sure, he got an advantage in admissions to Yale Law School, not because of the color of his skin but because his achievements to date of the application were done with a considerable "degree of difficulty," to borrow a term from the Olympics.
Isn't background different from affirmative action? The point of AA is to have a racially balanced class (however one does such things) in spite of relative levels of achievement; the point of considering background is to give context to achievement. "Background" can include anything from growing up in extreme poverty, to putting oneself through college, or dealing with illness or disability. It has nothing to do with race, gender, sexual orientation, or the like.
Since the LSAT is a heavy g-loaded test, these statistics are entirely consistent with the measured black-white IQ gap of 1.1 standard deviations. This gap that has persisted virtually unchanged for over eighty years. Yes the Flynn effect has raised black IQ scores, but it has also raised white scores as well. If we believe that the white-black gap is mostly environmental then we must conclude that the white-black environmental disparity has also remained unchanged for 80 years. One should also note that the white-black average IQ gap increases with increasing socio-economic status. If low black IQ scores were mostly the result of poverty then we would expect the white-black gap to diminish with increasing socio-economic status. But it doesn’t, it increases significantly. See Figure 11.2 on page 358 of Jensen’s book The g Factor.
Yet when Thomas arrived, notwithstanding his unparalleled history of achievement despite impossible odds, he was coddled and patronized while the trust fund babies with purchased admissions easily blended into the fabric of Yale’s assumed exceptionalism.
In retrospect, he would have rather through blind admissions attended the law school where he deserved admittance without regard to race so that he would have been treated as every other student's equal. Yet in modern law schools this option is unavailable to black students. When he looks at law schools today with set-asides on law review, segregated rooms where only minorities hang out, exam-preparation seminars required only of minorities that on their face presume minorities can't compete otherwise, he sees his bankrupt experience forced upon every black student who has attended law school after him. This will ruffle Thomas's feather until the day he dies – because affirmative action will still be even if made illegal, e.g., at my school.
The thing that seems to escape many of you is that excellently prepared blacks simply were not admitted to majority law schools. Does anyone here remember the experience of Thurgood Marshall with the University of Maryland?
And when we step back to the high school etc schools, particularly the private schools like the Sidwell Friends in Washington DC, the Carteret School in West Orange, New Jersey etc, as I have said before, the anti-black racism was profoundly intense to keep blacks out. I walked you through all that in other posts. I was there as were my parents. I know precisely of what I speak. I mean I am the son of a U.S. Foreign Service Office having a hard time being allowed to go to these schools. If you can not see just how vicious anti-black racism was then, then you are just in denial.
For law schools, what changed is that in 1960-61 there were admissions officers at top white law schools like Columbia and Yale and Harvard who came to the realization that it was absolutely essential for this country to have more black lawyers. I know one of them Frank Walwer who was Associate Dean of Admissions at Columbia back then and he told me the story. You can see that in my article, "The Color Line in International Commercial Arbitration: An American Perspective" in the American Review of International Arbitration in 2004 at Columbia.
Walwer and the other Associate Deans went about increasing numbers slowly but surely. This was way before affirmative action (a Nixon creation) was even on the table.
If you deny the 100 odd years from slavery and all the benefits given to generations of whites who had parents or grandparents or great-grandparents who were permitted to go through the feeder schools to these prestigious institutions etc, then you are just masking way too much of the history.
Of course, Justice Thomas was a beneficiary of a racial preference - both at Holy Cross and Yale. Why? Because he is black and those schools rarely if ever had blacks in them until there was a commitment made to add more blacks than had ever been at these schools in their history.
Those who say - oh he would have been admitted - simply forget that blacks WERE NOT ADMITTED - PERIOD. That is the essence of it - except maybe one every 20 to 40 years.
I see my classes here where I teach and that need to have more minority lawyers remains essential.
As to guilt feelings of anyone who has received some kind of preference, that reminds me of what I say to students who have a friend in the business somewhere. I tell them to use whatever they have to help them get where they want to go, because everyone else is using whatever they have.
People lay trips on you all the time. If you allow people to lay trips on you about affirmative action, then you are allowing yourself to be played. The thing to do is to do your best. Before affirmative action, there was something else about being black or a woman or something. If just goes with the territory. If you feel really guilty about it, then quit your profession and do something that does not use the degree.
Sorry. Clarence Thomas is free to bemoan affirmative action all he wants as are others. I will always say I am grateful for those persons of many colors who took the chance on me at every step of the way from first grade up through Harvard Business School. I am a beneficiary of affirmative action and I greatly appreciate the opening up of a very closed society that affirmative action permitted for me. I feel absolutely no guilt about it. I just try to do the best I can with what I have.
Peace,
Ben
Thomas seems to be playing games with his academic record. We get to know that he excelled at College of the Holy Cross, but for law school we know only that he graduated "somewhere in the middle" of his class - not in first place or last place, but somewhere in between. The reality of his ranking would play into his post-Yale employment issues, unless you presuppose that anybody with a Yale-branded diploma graduates into at least one job offer. But unlike his vaunted Holy Cross ranking, it's a closely held secret.
It would be easier for me to believe Clarence Thomas if his other claims were credible (e.g., a former seminary student and Catholic university graduate who can't recall a single discussion of Roe v Wade) or if he weren't so selective in his disclosure of facts. Also, where did Oyez get the impression that Thomas was recruited by "many firms" after graduating but turned them down because he was offended that they were "hinting at opportunities to do pro bono work"?
Best,
Ben
Both this and the LSAT disparity are perfectly consistent with Dean Kay's statement. From her statement it is reasonable to conclude that marginal applicants who are admitted are disproportionately black, because it is precisely marginal black applicants who have an advantage over their white competition. Thus black students will have lower average LSAT's than whites.
As to those "very, very rare circumstances," I wonder what they might be.
As applied, but not by definition. Affirmative action is currently race-based (unless you're Asian) or gender-based. But it could also be income based or "totality of the circumstances" based.
The question is, should we trust administrators with such discretion; or would they use a "totality of the circumstances" test as a way to discriminate based on race. Sadly, the answer seems to be that our trust is unwarranted.
re Joseph Jett: When applying for the MIT class of '67, I was not asked for a photo or interviewed, whereas IIRC that was standard operating procedure for other competitive schools at the time. (I don't recall any checkoffs for ethnicity, but maybe that came later.) As I learned to my surprise and disappointment this year at my 40th reunion in discussions with classmates whose forebears attended MIT years before and through an obituary notice of an exceptional scientist MIT had granted a scholarship only to pull it when they learned he was Jewish, MIT was not always a place of pure meritocracy. Still, I think it was well ahead of the Ivies, Seven Sisters, and other academically competitive institutions in that regard. There were not many AA students at the time (Adam Clayton Powell IV was one of them), but I was and am unaware of any discrimination that operated then for or against anyone on any basis other than academic abilities, especially math and science ones. And I doubt that there was/is any school where SAT scores and acceptances are more closely correlated. (The dean of admissions who lost her job last year when it was learned she had falsified her own academic credentials for no very good reason, tried to change that, looking for more "well-rounded" students.) The Ivies, the "potted" Ivies, NESCAC schools can admit athletes with inferior academic abilities and see them through, but MIT did not offer such possibilities for them, since everyone had to pass 2 years of math, 2 years of physics, and a year of inorganic chemistry, with "guts" a true rarity.
Maybe MIT was encouraging minority applications when Jett was applying and he didn't want to doubt whether he got in without a "preference" for race, but I expect his concern was an unwarranted one. In any event, he is a somewhat problematic witness given the trouble he got himself into later and the way he handled it.
Re "racist" and "antisemitic:" must we wait for a thread specific to those topics before you will tell us whether or not you think it "racist" to discriminate against someone on the basis of skin color and "antisemitic" because they are Jewish? Do you have terms for such that you prefer to "racist" and "antisemitic"? Or, do you think there is no there there conceptually, and hence no call for the terms "racist," "antisemitic" or alternative ones? Or, are you still pondering definitions and terminology, trying to come up with the more precise? As I said at the conclusion of DB's thread about Finkelstein, and now say in this one that is so much about "race" and "racism," I don't see what you can contribute to these conversations when you maintain as you have that it is pointless to discuss "racism" and "antisemitism" until those terms/concepts are defined to your satisfaction.
Can't you say that "race" and "racism" is a fundamental part of what this thread is about, and as it would relate to the denial of places to Jews, then it would be about "antisemitism"? I fail to see why that should be in the least difficult to do.
Yes. That's what I thought the special circumstances were, of course. But none of what you say refutes my point about favoritism for the marginal black applicant leading to low average black LSAT scores.
Still, if you oppose affirmative action for minorities, how do you feel about these other forms of favoritism which can, after all, be considered, like AA, an advantage conferred by family background?
In Black &White on Wall Street, Jett relates how he made a bet with a white high school classmate that he could gain admission to MIT without using racial preferences.
I appreciate, and am somewhat flattered, by your eagerness to engage me on the topic of whether the terms "racism" and "anti-semitism" have lost their meaning today. However, since the pertiment thread in which we were engaged has fallen off the bottom of the screen, you will just have to be patient. Another opportunity will arise.
Danny J. Boggs
Prof. Davis: That doesn't make any sense. How on earth do you come to the conclusion that the only two options are anti-black racial discrimination or pro-black racial discrimination? How on earth do you conclude that there couldn't have been "political will to change" to something in between those two extremes? Do you not see an option anywhere in between those two extremes?
How on earth do you conclude that the very same people who were so pro-black that they were actually willing to discriminate in favor of blacks would have been unwilling to judge blacks fairly?
Probably not, because it decades before most of us were born. Why do you keep assuming in these discussions that racial attitudes are no different in 2007 than in 1957 or 1937?
Yes. I do (in a manner of speaking). Maryland did not accept blacks. But, as David Nieporent has just pointed out, it does not follow that the only proper response to discrimination against blacks is discrimination in favor of blacks. Indeed, the Thurgood Marshall who argued the Brown case explicitly argued exactly the opposite, as did the proponents of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
It would be easier for me to believe Clarence Thomas if his other claims were credible (e.g., a former seminary student and Catholic university graduate who can't recall a single discussion of Roe v Wade) or if he weren't so selective in his disclosure of facts.
David Nieporent:
It would be easier for me to take you seriously if your claims were credible (e.g., repeating a lie that said he never discussed Roe v Wade, when he never said that.)
Nieporent, Passing By did not say what you attribute to him. You say Passing By claims Thomas said he never discussed Roe v. Wade. Passing By actually says Thomas claimed he could not recall a single discussion of Roe v. Wade. For the sake of historical accuracy let's have a look at what Thomas did say and determine who is lying about what Thomas said. Passing By is a lot closer to the truth than your accusation that he is lying.
As for "engag(ing) (you) on the topic of whether the terms 'racism' and 'anti-semitism' have lost their meaning today," I already have. And unless I have completely misunderstood you, which I don't think I have, I see no point to further back and forth on the subject. How could it be at all productive? If you ever come up with criteria for "racism" and "antisemitism" that are as precise as you require for your own purposes, then feel free to share them any time you want. Like Humpty Dumpty, you can chose to give those terms whatever meaning you chose, or dispense with them altogether and offer substitute ones, even your own neologisms. In the meanwhile, though, understand that the rest of us are not going to wait for you to articulate and defend them before debating what is generally understood by "racism" and "antisemitism." (Nor are "racism" and "antisemitism" likely to disappear in the meanwhile.)
So surely when Passing By claimed that Thomas was lying, he was accusing Thomas of lying about whether he himself had discussed it -- not whether Thomas remembered other people discussing it. In short, your interpretation of Passing By's claim is absurd.
I agree there is no point to keep going back and forth on the issue. I dropped the issue when the pertinent thread ended. You have been the one trying to engage with me.