The Affirmative Action Candidate?

One of the unintended consequences of affirmative action is that it casts a shadow of doubt over any minority hired under its auspices. Originally designed to force companies to consider all qualified candidates for positions (as opposed to only white males), AA has come to be looked upon as the worst of political correctness.

The sloppy hiring of a few underqualified candidates has tainted the whole system. Companies which felt pressured to increase the numbers of minorities on their staffs have gone to enormous lengths to count employees as minority hires, even when the person was obviously not a minority.

I actually knew a man that this happened to. His father was British, his mother American. They divorced when he was very young and, eventually, his mother remarried to a man with a Hispanic surname. The stepfather adopted the boy, giving the person of British and American ancestry a Hispanic last name. But to employers, this man (and later, his wife and children) was Hispanic and always used as an affirmative action hire, even though he told the employers he was white.

I've watched more than a couple of people struggle with being the "affirmative action baby" for a company. They want to be hired and promoted based on their outstanding qualifications, not because of their skin color or the "z" on the end of their name. These people understand the ugliness of prejudice and discrimination, but they also recognize the damage that underqualified minorities do to future minority candidates. And so, these workers balance being a "tool of the man" versus getting ahead and proving themselves.

It occurred to me that this election has sort of become the triumph of the worst ideas of affirmative action. Barack Obama is not a man of great accomplishment; he is a man with a shadowy, hidden past who reads well and is pleasant enough to look at.

Like the worst affirmative action hires, he is underqualified for the job he seeks. He has no executive or decision-making experience. His policy ideas are largely outside mainstream thought. His foreign policy accumen is nonexistent. His economic plan is naive, unworkable, and will punish the productive while rewarding inaction. His judicial nominations will be chosen not for their outstanding intelligence or reasoning, but based on immature concepts such as past experience or "empathy." I don't want a judge who has been selected because he/she "knows what it's like to be a teenage mom." I want judges who know and adhere to traditional concepts of Anglo-American jurisprudence and applies the law in intelligent and recognizable ways.

We have been told there are good reasons to vote for Barack Obama. Some supporters have done a better job of making the case for Obama than others. But for most Obamaniacs, the reason to vote for their candidate is because of his skin color. Like the teachers who are pushing the "history making" aspect of the Obama campaign, these people seem less concerned about what it takes to be a president than they are about feeling good. It's obvious that, to these voters, whatever Obama does in office will not be damaging for us as a nation; they simply don't consider it important that a Democratic Congress and Democratic president would create the perfect storm for terrible domestic and foreign policy choices.

No, better to feel good and pat oneself on the back for "breaking the color barrier." After all, life has been hard. We are at war. There is a deficit. The country's financial system is shaky and we are starting to read of large scale layoffs. Big companies are failing and bigger ones are being propped up. Insecurity is on the rise. Why not feel good about something?

It's as if the election of a black man is the drug of choice, the opiate of the masses, these days. My hope is that America will not suffer too greatly if this willful blindness selects the most underqualified president ever for the highest affirmative action position we've ever seen.

Justice Thomas on Affirmative Action

This story seems like a "Well, duh!" moment to me, but I know there are others who simply don't see things this way.

Justice Thomas Says Constitution Forbids Racial Preference

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said Tuesday that African-Americans are better served by colorblind programs than affirmative action.

Thomas, addressing leaders of historically black colleges, said affirmative action "has become this mantra and there almost has become this secular religiosity about it. I think it almost trumps thinking."

A longtime opponent of race-based preferences in hiring and school admissions, Thomas said, "Just from a constitutional standpoint, I think we're going to run into problems if we say the Constitution says we can consider race sometimes...

"My suggestion would be to stop the buzz words and to focus more on the practical effect of what we're doing," he said Tuesday.

"I can tell you when you have fudge words, it leaves a lot of room for mischief," he said. "People have a tendency to read their personal opinions into fudge words. You want, when it comes to the issue of race, absolute words."

It seems to me that focusing on actual, documented discrimination and using our race-neutral laws to eradicate that is a constitutional approach. Keep in mind that affirmative action was put into place at a time when businesses argued they "couldn't find" any qualified minorities to fill positions. 40-odd years later, that argument simply doesn't work. Even in areas where there are fewer minorities, there are still plenty of ways to find and encourage them in a given field. Arguing that the Constitution must allow racial preferences turns its language on its ear.

Race-Neutral Policies Are Wrong For America?

That's what Barack Obama is saying about Michgan's Proposition 2, which would ban affirmative action in that state. Via The Weekly Standard, here's the text:

This is Senator Barack Obama. And I'm asking you to vote no on Proposal 2. We've made great strides in our society towards fairness and opportunity for all people. But whether we like to admit it or not, there's still barriers to women and minorities reaching their full potential. Proposal 2 may sound like a reasonable way to move towards a Michigan that is blind to differences in sex and race but don't be fooled by the reassuring rhetoric. If the initiative becomes law it would wipe out programs that help women and minorities get a good education and jobs. It would hurt initiatives that help women and minorities build their own businesses. And it would eliminate efforts to help our children enter fields such as science, engineering, and mathematics. Proposal 2 closes these doors to many in Michigan and it moves us further away from a country of full opportunity. Proposal 2 is wrong for Michigan and it's wrong for America.

Worse, as Stephen F. Hayes points out, Obama compares ending affirmative action with 9/11.

"If you could have prevented 9/11 from ever happening, would you have?" the ad asked. "On November 7th there's a national disaster headed for Michigan, the elimination of affirmative action."

It seems to me that shilling for affirmative action flies in the face of the "different sort of politician"--the "post-racial" one--that Barack Obama claimed he would be. Instead, he's the same race baiter as anyone on the Left.

So, It Wasn't About His Grades

His selection as law review editor, that is.

Mr. Obama was elected after a meeting of the review's 80 editors that convened Sunday and lasted until early this morning, a participant said.

Until the 1970's the editors were picked on the basis of grades, and the president of the Law Review was the student with the highest academic rank...

That system came under attack in the 1970's and was replaced by a program in which about half the editors are chosen for their grades and the other half are chosen by fellow students after a special writing competition. The new system, disputed when it began, was meant to help insure that minority students became editors of The Law Review.

'Nuff said.

Frank Rich's Comments about Clarence Thomas Are Clearly Out of Line

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.

Does Affirmative Action Hurt Minorities in Professions?

I was listening to Michael Medved's show yesterday while I was out running errands. The hour was devoted to a study which showed that affirmative action in law school admissions actually hurts minorities.

The study was done by Richard H. Sander, a tenured law professor at UCLA and lifelong supporter of racial preferences.

Sander's study shows that racial preferences in law school admissions result in a counterproductive mismatch between the academic abilities of black beneficiaries of racial preferences and the law schools to which these students are admitted under "affirmative action". According to Sander's research, this mismatch demonstrably results in a much higher failure rate than would otherwise be the case if the black students were admitted to law schools which more closely matched the their academic preparation and abilities.

In other words, black law school students are actually hurt by affirmative action (racial preference) policies. According to Sander, black law school students would do much better academically and professionally if racial preferences either did not play a role in their admission to law schools, or played a significantly reduced role.

The results don't particularly surprise me. Top tier schools are the most demanding academically. It's far more competitive and more difficult to succeed. Sure, the rewards from graduating from such schools are greater, but, simply put, not everyone has what it takes to graduate from these schools. I know I certainly couldn't have, and I don't think I'm a slouch.

The issue is sensitive for a number of reasons both of historical discrimination and current day competitiveness. In a misguided attempt to compensate for past discrimination, top tier schools are admitting minority candidates who aren't up to the rigors of their programs. These same candidates would most likely succeed at second tier schools, graduating and, most importantly, passing the bar.

Regardless of which law school one attends, all potential attorneys must pass the state bar to become licensed practitioners. Whether you go to Harvard or South Texas, you have to pass the same Texas State Bar Exam to practice law in Texas. This was a key argument I didn't hear made in all the argumentation about the study. It doesn't really do any good to send underqualified students to top tier schools if they can't get the education they need to perform on the only test that really matters: the bar exam. Without the bar card, it doesn't matter which school gave you that doctorate of jurisprudence.

I think it is safe to say that if minority students received better educations in public school, they would perform better by the time they were choosing law schools. For those favoring affirmative action and other remedies for discrimination, I think that is the place to focus. Whether the answer to that problem is more money (I don't think so) or more testing (many others don't think so) or something else, pushing unqualified students into schools which ill-suit their abilities isn't the answer. Creating situations in which more minorities students succeed is.