AA Board: Good or Bad?

[Do you think an entire board devoted to AA is a good idea or a bad idea?]

Do you think an entire board devoted to AA is a good idea or a bad idea?

Good idea

Bad idea

Neutral

[redemption]

Spaulding likes suffering. Oh, I forget that you haven't visited his LSN.

[redemption]

Maybe he could offer him a bologna sandwich.

[redemption]

Maybe he could offer him a bologna sandwich.

Free?

Are you triple-checking your spelling, now? 

[redemption]

Maybe he could offer him a bologna sandwich.

i don't get this one.

It's his favorite. Breakfast, lunch & dinner

[BrerAnansi]

Well, for one thing there is a very large discrepancy in LSAT performance between, say, African Americans and Whites, and this (surely?) after accounting for schools, economic status, and the rest of it - hundreds of whites score above 170, for example, and only slightly more than a couple of handful of African Americans do so.

Is the LSAT just a test or is it indicative of a sort-of educational readiness? I think that, with the exception of games, that it is the latter. So that the disparities in LSAT scores likely reflect differences in readiness - in the ability to understand arguments, to read text etc.

There are causes for this that should probably be addressed at some point, and AA turns attention away from these causes, which is probably not a good thing. In fact, it's probably a really bad thing.


Another thing that one notices is that it is a blunt instrument in an unusual way. It seems to me that candidates of international origin   - Ethiopians, Ghanaians, Nigerians, W-Islanders -  are the ones that benefit in the greatest numbers from race-based AA, especially at the higher-ranked schools - and it's not clear to me that they face - on average - quite the same, specifically "race-correlated" circumstances that African Americans do, either before or after law school.

So you have a situation where future generations of African Americans are paying for a policy that is intended to redress institutional racism againt the present generation of African Americans, but it turns out that a significant plurality (maybe a majority?) of the beneficiaries are from another group altogether. It seems, in the aggregate and at the level of public policy, like a lose-lose proposition to me.


Obviously, the response to this concern would be to say that there's no effective difference between the race-effect faced by an Ethiopian, Nigerian, Haitian and black American. Maybe, although I personally don't buy it.

I pretty much agree with everything you said here Red.  I do have a comment to make with regard to the bolded part: within two or three generations the differences that separate these immigrants groups (with regard to the AA beneficiaries and not the group as a whole) from the African-American community will be lost.  I may be wrong, but it would seem to me that  whether they are the great-great-granchildren of slaves or the grandchildren of Nigerian immigrants, they will be equally motivated to further the interests of their community.  I think the thrust of my point is that although the utilization of the perks of AA by immigrants may not lead to an entirely linear redress of institutional racism, barring mass repatriation, it acheives those limited aims.   

[redemption]

I pretty much agree with everything you said here Red.  I do have a comment to make with regard to the bolded part: within two or three generations the differences that separate these immigrants groups (with regard to the AA beneficiaries and not the group as a whole) from the African-American community will be lost.  I may be wrong, but it would seem to me that  whether they are the great-great-granchildren of slaves or the grandchildren of Nigerian immigrants, they will be equally motivated to further the interests of their community.  I think the thrust of my point is that although the utilization of the perks of AA by immigrants may not lead to an entirely linear redress of institutional racism, barring mass repatriation, it acheives those limited aims.   

yes, this could be a fair point. It's still an incredibly cost-ineffective way of going about the redress of current disadvantage, however.

[BrerAnansi]

Agreed.  I think I owe you a response on another thread where we were discussing proactive rather than retroactive means to address the disparities.  I've forgotten what it's called, but it's somewhere in my unreads.  I've been absent from LSD for a while, busy with school and all, but now I can make good on my pledge to submit my system to be picked apart and dismissed as unworkable.

[redemption]

Ah, okay. I look foward to that 

[! B L U E WAR R I O R..!]

1.  it is amazing how intelligent and semi-intelligent law school potentials still are caught up in using race as a category to label people...

race is an archaic and vague term and in many cases is used to support arguments which fall under demand for specifics or examples.

...race is a cognitive delusion of our era...

2.  give up the aa arguments...it is here...get used to it.

[H4CS]

Wow, I lost what happened in this thread.  Someone please xplain to me how violence, spanking and bologna can solve the problems of AA.  In 250 words.  Remind me never to sober up.