So basically you are attempting to compare the role AA plays in a process by which students are accepted or rejected to schools offering advanced professional degrees --based, at least to some degree on merit--to a program that helps to provide lunches to underpriveleged youths? To clarify, I never said I would oppose programs to encourage more minority applications to law schools, especially programs that would help reduce the financial burden that often accompanies the application process. I was never arguing that the perception of poverty was the problem with AA, so your comparison of free lunch programs and the role played by AA in the law school admission process does not really address my point, which strictly dealt with notion of merit.
If a young, black law applicant with the drive and determination to go to law school needs financial assistance, then I am all for it. He/she can take the LSAT for free, receive free study materials, and get all of the application fees waived when they decide where to apply. At that point, however, I feel that it should become entirely about merit and about ones previous accomplishments relative to the other students applying at a given school. Personally, I would like to see "blind" applications, which would leave out entirely ones racial group belonging. In addition, I would like to see the Personal Statements standardized in the topical sense, which would allow all applicants to address a particular issue/subject, thereby leaving race/socioeconomic status and the like entirely out of the equation. I understand that some groups have an easier time than others in getting to a point at which they can be successful law school applicants. This is unfortunate. But so long as their are programs to "level the playing field" with regard to the financial requirements that come with applying, I dont feel that additional assistance is needed. Additional assistance beyond that point, as I stated previously, will only be a burden for those minority students who earn their spots.
I would like to see the day where a Harvard grad is a Harvard grad, a day where no one could downgrade ones accomplishment by appealing to a certain program. When a newly ordained African American man with a Harvard law degree first sets foot in a courtroom, I hope the opposing council, in a moment of sheer terror, mentions to one of his associates, without qualifying the accomplishment,"I think this guy is a Harvard grad, Oh, Sh%t," rather than, "This guy is from Harvard I think. Oh well, he IS black."