That's the gist of Orin Kerr's dissection of this nasty column by Frank Rich.
But it is Frank Rich, after all. Should one be surprised?
Rich has made a career out of spinning for the Democratic Party, so much so that I wouldn't be surprised if he's a paid consultant. But he does work for the New York Times, so I suppose it is the same thing.
In his memoir, My Grandfather's Son, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas relates one example of affirmative action's devastating unintended effects on minorities. After graduating in the middle of his class from Yale Law School, Thomas could not find a job and finally accepted one in the Missouri government because of the state's attorney general, John Danforth.
According to Rich, who knows nothing about law school or legal careers, assistant attorney general (the job Thomas accepted) for $10,000 a year was a "plum job." Further, Rich says Thomas got the job because he "worked the Yalie network," the informal way in which graduates of a university hire new grads from the same school. And, of course, we all know how an Ivy League degree is a guarantee of life on the fast track.
Unfortunately for Rich, but fortunately for Americans, Kerr smacks down this lie.
As I understand it, in Missouri the title "Assistant Attorney General" is the standard job title given to an entry-level attorney hired in the state Attorney General's Office. It's not exactly a common destination for those "work[ing] the Yalie network"; my googling around suggests that most Assistant Attorneys General in Missouri are hired straight from Missouri law schools.
Perhaps Rich was misled by the fact that in the federal government, the job of Assistant Attorney General is indeed quite a job. It's a Senate-confirmed position, often heading hundreds of attorneys.
But state governments are different. In many states, that lofty title is given to entry-level lawyers. My sense is that this is the case in Missouri. If you look at the listings of job openings in that office, they are all for the position of Assistant Attorney General.
I did a little googling around to see what kind of resumes and experience lawyers typically have before being appointed Assistant Attorney General in Missouri. Here are a few bios of attorneys who once held the job, with their law school attended and how long after graduation they were hired: Brundage (Missouri-Columbia, year after graduation), Rebman (Missouri - Kansas City, right after graduation), Ottenad (Wash. U., right after passing bar), Miller (Wash. U., after law school graduation), Glaser (Drake, after 2 years at small firm), Franke (Missouri-KC, right after graduation), Cosgrove (Notre Dame, apparently after short stint at KC firm), Richardson (Missouri, right after graduation), Zito (Missouri-KC, apparently right after law school), Siegel (Wash. U., right after graduation), Spinden (Missouri-KC, apparently right after law school).
As best I can tell, these individuals who were hired as Assistant AG in Missouri did not have "the opportunity to work the Yalie network to jump-start [their] career[s]." I can find no other Yale graduates who had this job, and for that matter I haven't been able to find anyone who attended an "elite" school either at the undergraduate or graduate level who had it.
None of this is to say that being an assistant attorney general is a bad job. They are respectable and good ways to gain experience needed for better positions. But the fact is that Yale Law graduates don't become assistant attorney generals in Flyover Country because the job was just too good to pass up. Indeed, Yale Law graduates go to law firms where they determine to make partner or become law professors with aspirations to become president.
In short, Frank Rich, as usual, has a distorted, myopic view of what affirmative action does for the people it purports to help. Indeed,the original goals--that minority candidates would be considered alongside white candidates--was admirable. But in practice, what happens is that candidates hired through affirmative action live with the stigma that they were hired "only" because they fit the right category. I've known numerous people who had this sort of humiliation foisted upon them by companies more interested in looking good rather than being good. But Frank Rich, like so many white male liberals, wouldn't know what it's like to have people "know" why you were hired and that it wasn't because of your qualifications. Clarence Thomas, on the other hand, had first-hand experience with the affirmative action stigma.
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