Report: Affirmative Action Hurts Everybody
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=5745
by Linda Chavez
Posted Nov 11, 2004

A new study, however,

Consequently, only about 45 percent of black law school graduates pass
their bar exams on their first attempt, compared with about 80 percent of
white graduates.

Report: Affirmative Action Hurts Everybody
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=5745
by Linda Chavez
Posted Nov 11, 2004
For more than three decades, supporters of affirmative action have argued
that racial preferences in higher education were absolutely vital if blacks
and other minorities were to obtain college and professional degrees. In
July 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court seemed to agree, at least with respect to
law school admissions at the University of Michigan.
Writing for the majority in Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice Sandra Day
O'Connor said, "In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in
the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be
visibly open to talented and qualified members of every race and ethnicity,"
approving the use of explicit racial preferences to do so. "We expect that
25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary
to further the interest approved today," she wrote in the 5-4 decision.
A new study, however, debunks the myth that those preferences are necessary
even now, providing stunning evidence that affirmative action may actually
hurt the chances of blacks to obtain their law degrees.
Richard H. Sander, a law professor at UCLA and a self-described Democrat and
lifelong supporter of affirmative action, has recently completed the most
comprehensive look ever at the effect of affirmative action on the academic
achievement of black law students. The study appears in the November issue
of Stanford Law Review. Looking at the performance of black and other
students at 21 law schools in the mid-1990s, Sander notes in the
introduction to his study, "there has never been a comprehensive attempt to
assess the relative costs and benefits of racial preferences in any field of
higher education."
Sander focuses on what he describes as the "costs" and "benefits" of
affirmative action to blacks. He is less concerned about the harm such
programs may do to better-qualified white and Asian students who have been
passed over in the admissions process than he is about what happens to the
less-qualified black students who are admitted in their place. He argues
that his data demonstrate that blacks are harmed by the very programs aimed
at helping them. Most black applicants, he writes, "end up at schools where
they will struggle academically and fail at higher rates than they would in
the absence of preferences. . Perhaps, most remarkably, a strong case can be
made that in the legal education system as a whole, racial preferences end
up producing fewer black lawyers each year than would be produced by a
race-blind system."
Among first-year law students, Sander reports, 52 percent of blacks earn
grades that put them in the lowest 10 percent of their class. Only 8 percent
of blacks earn grades in the top half of their class. And their performance
does not improve with time. About 19 percent of black students in this study
dropped out without completing law school, compared with 8 percent of white
students. Of those who completed law school, however, about half continued
to earn grades that put them at the bottom 10 percent of their class.
Consequently, only about 45 percent of black law school graduates pass their
bar exams on their first attempt, compared with about 80 percent of white
graduates.
Sander estimates that if black students were admitted through a race-blind
process, so that their skills were properly matched to the schools' own
admissions criteria, far more black students would do well, graduate and
pass the bar. He estimates that the end of racial preferences could end up
producing nearly 10 percent more black lawyers.
My own Center for Equal Opportunity has published studies of 57 public
colleges and universities and nine professional schools revealing the extent
of racial preferences, which are both wide and deep -- affecting not only
the most elite schools but even less competitive colleges, and providing a
very substantial advantage in admissions to blacks and to somewhat less
extent, Latinos. We've shown that, judging from their tests scores and grade
point averages, black students, in particular, are often admitted to schools
for which they are poorly prepared, and we've reported that they are less
likely to graduate from these schools. But we've seldom had access to data
to show how they performed while in school. Prof. Sander has now provided
that data -- and the picture it paints is gloomy indeed.
Racial preferences not only harm whites and Asians who are passed over for
admissions to colleges and professional schools in favor of less qualified
blacks and Latinos, they do real harm to the very students they were
intended to help.

Keep this crap on your own group!

'Group: alt.lawyers Date: Sat, Nov 13, 2004, 4:42am (CST+6) From:
nonigshere@xx1x.xxx (Nigger News Service)
'
ME: I take strong offense to your Bigoted persona , as a white person ;
your racial hatred has no place in this DG or in society. In the
Creators eyes, we are all 'one blood' regardless of the color of 4 lbs
of skin per person. Practice loving others instead of going thru life
as an egotistical person with a superiority complex.