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Minority and Non-Traditional Law Students / Re: Why Affirmative Action is Justified
« on: May 21, 2010, 08:48:30 PM »Affirmative Action does not do anything for black people but only hurt them. Affirmative Action reinforces racist notions, not decrease racist notions. If I were black and a company would not hire me, then I would not want to be in that company as even if I did get the job, the stress would not be worth it. There would be better, more friendly jobs out there for me. I think Affirmative Action is primarily for angry people who want to get back at the person not hiring them.
Also, sometimes an employer just does not hire you because your personality is not suited for the firm. That does not mean you go out and get AA. That just reinforces more racist notions. Your perception of why someone does not higher you is not providentially fact.
So it's this thread that started the love-hate (i keeed) relationship between you two.
Wow.

Actually, going by your logic here, best thing for every black law student to do then is to only attend Howard or FAMU's law school and go to work for only themselves in solo practice or a black firm owner or a firm with majority blacks.
Hispanic ones to go to ones with highest concentrations of Hispanics...Asians go to that one in Cali that I think I saw was majority or significantly Asian.
Looks like segregation to me. Except small issue with that: the whites by virtue of historical advantage would then be the only ones with access to all positions of power since law is the biggest nepotism/legacy/ole boy network in the professional fields...and that means every other group would get marginalized.
And correction, as a white person (who is not an immigrant or first gen), there would be better more friendly jobs. In your hypothesis, you forget that for blacks especially there many times IS no better or friendlier option. Everywhere in this country the higher up you go in a career, the more white male it looks. So scratch that. Imagine a world where you are not welcome ANYwhere if they can hire someone who does NOT look like you, and only when none of their own kind wants the job then they sigh and huff and take you, waiting to see you screw up like they expect you to.
Toxic, ain't it?
But that's not the life of all minorities, nor is that the mindset of all whites. Many minorities AND whites had working class families going way back, and many share the clean slate of the immigrant...
Law schools left to their own devices are not giving equal access to legal education. Why should minorities be so accepting of your rather exclusive view yet you can't/won't accept that whites should be accepting of the opposite view?
I like the idea of running my own show versus kissing up to someone who doesn't want me there, actually, but for one, I like and need the option to work for someone else, for two, I am not willing to think that every white person would stay away from me given the choice, and the ones that actually care about life outside their own little world should be able to have a wellrounded higher learning experience, and for three with the increased earning power of the growing middle class of minorities, it is simply good business sense to be able to send representatives out at all levels and in all facets of the law that look like the newcomers and speak their language (culturally, linguistically, literally, figuratively, whatever).
It's not just the kindness of their hearts why they do it. It all comes down to money...schools that don't take federal funds can be as racist prick as they feel like.
And for four, you can't assume that every minority in the class got in because of AA. That's your thinking why you even say things like this. What about the ones whose scores and whole app. package are equivalent to the white ones present in their 1L class? They should miss the chance to attend a school possibly nearer to them or more geared towards their interests than an east coast school, for example, simply because the profs, admin, and students will not like the colour of their skin or the look of their eyes or hair or accent?
I would think it's obvious then that the problem is in whoever thinks like that, not the URMs. The world and people's hearts are not perfect, so adjustments have to be made for those known imperfections.
Think of it as a form of legacy admit. From the legacy of injustice and prejudice against minorities as opposed to "oh my daddy went here." There are many brilliant minorities whose daddies COULD have given them traditional legacy status, had they not been barred by law from attending the same school...had their ancestors not been penned up like goats instead of working to establish a future (Japanese)...the kids whose parents are not just rich but wealthy now did not get that way in one generation...it is a building up from subsistence level over time, over generations...think what happens when someone's family is actively prevented from getting past basic. Their kids will be behind no matter how bright they are, same way a hurdler whose hurdles are nearly twice as high as the majority of runners' hurdles is THAT much more likely to hit one of the hurdles and fall. They fail out of the race, their kid gets the crappy lane to start the race and the one whose parents had no such hurdles and won the race, that kid gets the nice inside track and normal hurdles.
And, people don't "go out and get" AA. It's a federal mandate that businesses, esp. those with >50 employees, have to live by. Often if you don't put your race down, some of them will note it for you when they see you. It's supposedly optional and it's not suppose to be associated with identifiable info in your file, but it always is.
Anyway, I am going to give this a break cause this debate will never end as long as everyone has breath left in their body.