[Bret L]

End Affirmative Action, End the Black Upper Class: The Case of Law

Richard Hoste

October 16, 2009

"It was with great interest that I read Christopher Donovan’s TOO article on politically incorrect comments at a blog for the lawyerly elite. The field of law prides itself on being a meritocracy. Being made up of educated Westerners, it is also very liberal on racial issues. It’s hard to be both.

The two main academic factors considered in law school admissions are
GPA and more importantly, the prospect’s score on the LSAT. Grades
aren’t a very good indicator of skill since students choose their own
majors, which of course vary in difficulty. That leaves the LSAT as
the main determinant of what law schools a student is eligible for.
The test is divided into four parts. Three are different forms of
reading comprehension, and one is made up of logical games. The latter
part gives the student 35 minutes to answer around 28 questions,
broken up into four games. Many students don’t even finish three of
the four. The LSAT requires no previous knowledge and the only thing
that significantly helps improve scores is taking time to learn
strategies for the games. It still takes intelligence to know quickly
what kind of game you’re looking at, be able to accurately comprehend
directions (if (a) then (b) doesn’t necessarily mean if (b) then (a)),
make logical inferences (if (a) then (b) and if (b) then not (c)
implies that if (a) then not (c)), etc.

Quite clearly, the LSAT is a barely-disguised IQ test. Those
interested can try the June 07 test here. Mensa takes anybody who
scores at the 95th percentile or above.

Without affirmative action, there is virtually no overlap in student
LSAT scores between the very best and the “just good” law schools. At
number 4 ranked University of Chicago, a 169 is the 25th percentile —
meaning that only 25% of students score 169 or below. At number 20
Boston University, 166 is the 75th percentile. Very few of those who
got into Boston University have a good enough score for the University
of Chicago. And very few from number 45 University of Utah (75th
percentile 162) could’ve gotten into Boston University (25th
percentile 163). (See data here.)

The more high-end firms will only recruit from the best schools and
those who go to lower-ranked schools may struggle to find employment.
It’s a winner take all system. Many on the internet, such as blogger
Half Sigma, argue that law school isn’t worth the time or money if you
can’t get into a top 14 school.

What place does affirmative action have in this system? In 2007–2008,
12,152 Blacks took the LSAT. Their average score was 142.15 and the
standard deviation 8.4. In a normal distribution only one in a
thousand scores three SDs above the mean. Three SDs over the Black
average is 167.35. We’ll round up to 168. Only a little over one in a
thousand Blacks who take the LSAT each year scores that high, or 16 of
them in 2007–2008.

There are six law schools nationwide that have their 25th percentile
at 168 or above. For example, Harvard’s 25th percentile score is 170.
We can consider the 25th percentile the minimum required to get into
any particular law school for a non-affirmative action beneficiary
(i.e. Eurasian). Most below that level are the AA cases or people who
have something in their application that stands out and makes up for a
low LSAT score (maybe a 4.0 GPA or having a parent in the admissions
office).

Since in 2007–2008 there were only 16 Blacks nationwide who scored at
168 or above, that’s the number of Blacks that should’ve entered the
top six schools. Here are the numbers from the ABA for actual Black
first year enrollment in 2008–2009.

School


25th percentile LSAT


Blacks in 1st year class


Blacks as percentage of entering students

Harvard


170


67


11.8

Yale


169


18


9.5

Stanford


168


18


10.6

Columbia


170


33


8.6

New York University


169


30


6.7

University of Chicago


169


13


7.1

That’s 179 Blacks at top law schools. Actual Blacks at top law schools
divided by deserving Blacks = 179/16 = 11.2.

So there are about 10 undeserving Blacks at the top six law schools
for every one deserving case. This puts things in perspective for
people who say that they oppose affirmative action because it
stigmatizes African-Americans. Is it more rational to care more about
the feelings of one Black out of 11 who gets where he is based on
merit than the 10 Whites and Asians who lose their spot to a
beneficiary of the system? Only if the self-esteem of one Black is
worth more than the livelihoods of 10 non-NAMs!

Let’s look at the rest of the schools that round out the top 14. Among
these schools, the one with the lowest 25th percentile score is the
University of California-Berkeley at 164. We can take that number as
the absolute Ice People minimum needed to get into a T14 school
without AA. This number is about 2.6 SDs over the African-American
mean. .47% of Blacks, or approximately 57, scored that high in 2007–
2008.

School


25th percentile LSAT


Blacks in 1st year class


Blacks as percentage of entering students

Northwestern University


166


25


10.3

Duke University


165


20


9.8

University of California-Berkley


164


16


6.0

University of Pennsylvania


166


19


7.7

University of Michigan-Ann Arbor


166


14


3.8

University of Virginia


166


16


4.3

Cornell University


166


12


6.1

Georgetown University


166


50


8.5

This makes a grand total of 351 Blacks entering T14 schools a year.
The ratio of undeserving to deserving Blacks at these schools overall
is about 5:1.

About 300 Ice People (mostly whites) are locked out of T14 schools
every fall to make room for Blacks.

The above table shows that 164 is the bare minimum required for a
White or Asian to score at or above the 25th percentile and thus have
a reasonable chance of getting into a T14 school. With our numbers we
can also figure out the bare minimum if you’re Black. 351 Blacks got
into a top law school out of the 12,152 who took the test. That’s
2.89% of African-American test takers, or those who scored 1.9 SDs and
over the group average. The Black minimum is thus around 158.




Minimum LSAT score for top 14 law school


Percentile of all LSAT takers

Caucasians/Asians


164


93

Blacks


158


77

Things are just as interesting if we go back and look at those six
schools with a 168 minimum. They took in 179 Blacks, or 1.4% of all
African-American test takers, which were those who scored 2.2 SDs
above the 142 mean or higher.




Minimum LSAT score for top 6 law school


Percentile of all LSAT test takers

Caucasians/Asians


168


97

Blacks


161


86

So if you have a score of 163 (90th percentile) and you’re White
forget about the top 14, but if you’re Black expect to get into the
top six.

The Financial Cost

The Internet Legal Research Group records starting salaries for recent
law graduates of different schools. The Black with a score of 158 who
gets into Cornell (13) and actually ends up a lawyer can expect to
start out making $145,000 a year when he graduates if he gets a job in
the private sector. What happens to a White with a score of 158? The
best he can hope for is a school like Indiana University-Bloomington
(23) or University of Iowa (26). Graduates of those colleges start at
$85,000 and $95,000 a year respectively in the private sector. That’s
if they can get a job outside of government. If the University of
Iowa graduate can only find work with the state he can expect a
starting annual salary of $39,500. Undoubtedly those who graduate from
Iowa have a much worse chance of getting a job in the private sector
than those from Cornell. The affirmative-action case with the 158 LSAT
score (approx. 118 IQ) makes anywhere from an extra $40,000 to
$105,500 in his first year out of school for being Black.

Interestingly, the extra money that a Black T14 affirmative action
recipient gets isn’t taken from any one White lawyer, but is
distributed down the ladder. A White with a score of 158 isn’t getting
into an elite school anyway. The African-American who gets into school
#4 might kick a White student down to #10, that White student kicks
another White student from #10 down to #15, etc. Somewhere down the
line there will be an Ice Person who couldn’t get into any law schools
thanks to the affirmative action Black at school #4 and maybe another
who can’t find a job upon graduation because he went to #80 instead of
#60.

It’s pretty much unthinkable that affirmative action will get much
worse without destroying the integrity of law. You simply can’t scrape
the barrel much lower for Blacks who can do the work. Already, 53% of
Blacks who start law school never end up passing the bar exam compared
to 24% of Whites. I figured that if the top 14 law schools wanted
Blacks to be 10% of their enrollment, they would need to accept 485 a
year and some Blacks with scores of 156. That’s only about half a
standard deviation above the overall average for all test-takers. Many
of the AA cases would probably drop out, but a few would stick it out
and drive their White classmates crazy.

What the Lawocracy Understands

The numbers above explain the comments of the anti-affirmative action
law students and professionals described in Christopher Donovan’s
article. If each year there are 16 Blacks smart enough to go to a law
school in the top six, and if Harvard and Yale between them take 85
Blacks, we must figure that those two schools mop up close to all
eligible African-Americans smart enough for the top six. That would
mean that at Columbia, Chicago, Stanford, and NYU virtually every
single White is smarter than every single Black.

So if law school students at every level are harmed by affirmative
action and must notice Black incompetence, why don’t they rise up
against the system? First of all, even with all the affirmative action
going on, Blacks are still way underrepresented in law schools and as
lawyers. Look at the numbers for the University of Michigan above.
Blacks made up less than 4% of the last entering class, a third of
their percentage in the American population. The admissions practices
of Michigan’s law school were the subject of a Supreme Court case in
2003. Those against affirmative action were justifiably arguing that
the few African-Americans that that school admits each year shouldn’t
be there. But who wants to be the person who makes a fuss about the
only 14 Black students in your graduating class?

At the same time, most Whites probably think that if affirmative
action was a significant factor in admissions then Blacks at all law
schools would at least have close to proportional representation. But
at no top 14 school do Blacks make up 12% of the student body, and at
a couple they are half that or less.

That there are so few Blacks in top law schools explains why the
incompetence of the ones there isn’t even more noticeable. We all know
that humans self-segregate and the typical White student probably has
very direct little contact with Blacks.

When reading The Affirmative Action Hoax, I learned that some of the
most shamelessly pro-affirmative action people out there are those who
control college admissions. The author tells of cases where these
bureaucrats held firm in the face of overwhelming political and legal
pressures.

Let me suggest that this may be because college admissions officers
know what ending affirmative action would entail. No affirmative
action means that NYU, Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Chicago
would be accepting on average two Blacks a year each. A few would
possibly have no Black students at all. So when liberals say that
equal standards is a “strategy for locking Blacks out of higher
education,” they have a point.

The question of racial preferences is thus a more difficult problem
than most people realize. Recently in President Obama’s speech to
school children he said “I know that sometimes, you get the sense from
TV that...your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or
being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any
of those things.” But if affirmative action ever ended, we’d have to
tell Black students that they’re probably more likely to be NBA stars
than Yale Law graduates. After all, there are 60 players drafted into
the NBA each year, the majority of whom are Black.

Admitting the unpleasant truths about race differences and working
towards colorblindness would, after decades of PBS specials, “look how
far we’ve comes” and “Yes, we cans!”, bring down nearly the entire
already meager Black upper class.

Not to say that I would have any problem with that. It’s just that
the rest of the world needs to be convinced it’s worth it. "


http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net.../Hoste-AA.html