<p>So are you admitting that most black students perform poorly in law school? Doesn’t that mean that affirmative action isn’t working?</p>
<p>No I’m simply stating that your argument does not make sense.</p>
<p>If you believe that AA should not be practiced because it hurts those it was intended to help, then you benefit, and you shouldn’t be complaining. Otherwise, it is working as intended, and your argument goes in the toilet.</p>
<p>Detail, you said that affirmative action had “practical success.” I refuted your argument by posting links that proved that black students struggle at schools for which they are not qualified.</p>
<p>Now you are trying to suggest that affirmative action makes it easier non-black students at law school? What about the thousands of qualified white and Asian students who were rejected because the school admitted some unqualified black applicant? I’m sure affirmative action makes it “easier” for them…</p>
<p>You aren’t making any sense here, but I will concede that it is hard to defend affirmative action and not look like a total moron.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but you need to learn how to logically follow and analyze a point of view, a skill required to do well on the LSAT and to succeed in law school. I don’t have the time or desire to explain it here, but I think you’ll get it in due time once you start reading LSAT prep books.</p>
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<p>If a top law school was filled with only qualified Asian students, then 25% of them will end up with $40k/year jobs upon graduation, many with 6 figure debts to pay off. So yes, if you are correct in your analysis of AA (of which I do not agree with), then AA does actually help Asian students because it allows them to attend a slightly lower ranked school where they could flourish.</p>
<p>Wow Detial. Just wow.</p>
<p>Detail, despite his astonishing condescension (not that housecat is much better), is actually correct. If we take Sander’s conclusions as correct, then it turns out that affirmative action, by reducing competition for white and Asian candidates, is actually helping them.</p>
<p>Sander’s essential thesis is that law school performance is more important than law school rank; as such, the Asian kid who can’t get into HLS and goes instead to, say, UVa is actually better off because affirmative action kept him out.</p>
<p>Again, this is all assuming Sander is correct, which is contest-able.</p>
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<p>This is a hilariously asinine question, but I’ll answer it from a practical perspective.</p>
<p>If I knew that my 166 would be equivalent to a 177, hell, I wouldn’t study as hard as I normally would for the exam.</p>
<p>Bluedevilmike, Detail ignores the fact that many students from top law schools do not want to go to big law firms.</p>
<p>Secondly, don’t you think employers would look at the top law schools differently if they knew that affirmative action was not practiced? For all we know, the students who are in the bottom quarter of the class at the top schools could all be students who got in through affirmative action (I think this is very likely). </p>
<p>Without affirmative action, employers would know that the lowest-ranked student at Harvard Law was about as qualified as the top-ranked student.</p>
<p>-kwu</p>
<p>Did you not see the math I posted? Or did you not understand it?</p>
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<p>The anonymous nature of the internet make it a haven for us to unleash our inner ■■■■■, amirite?</p>
<p>Edit: Also Harvard doesn’t rank, so I guess a bunch of white people would all succeed there. ;)</p>
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<p>Oh, I beg your pardon. This entire thread is a “tl;dr.” I based my statement on whatever “math” you had done that I saw.</p>
<p>-kwu</p>
<p>Sorry, I thought your answer was sarcastic and implied that you didn’t believe the statistic.</p>
<p>And would anyone care to explain to me why blacks score 10 points lower than whites on the LSAT?</p>
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Because the average African Americans study less than the average Caucasians. But the average Caucasian is also at a socioeconomic advantage, so…</p>
<p>Last time I checked, LSAT classes range from $1,200-$10,000.</p>
<p>And can you lay off African Americans already? Justice Thomas, the only African American justice in the Supreme Court, is fundamentally against the policy. Even Barack Obama has stated that his daughters do not deserve the benefit.</p>
<p>So Justice Thomas and Barack Obama represent the views of all blacks? Not to mention that Barack Obama is siding with the defendant in the reverse discrimination case currently at the Supreme Court…</p>
<p>Blacks overwhelmingly support affirmative action, and whites overwhelmingly oppose it. </p>
<p>Only 5% of blacks think that a college would choose the black student if it had to choose between a black student and an equally qualified white student. How delusional can they be?</p>
<p>Source: [Race</a> and Ethnicity](<a href=“http://www.pollingreport.com/race.htm]Race”>Race and Ethnicity)</p>
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They represent the power base yes. Luckily the United States is not a direct democracy, and we have representatives and such to make the important decisions.</p>
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First of all, according to the stats you posted, it’s 70% vs 45%. Secondly, this (relatively small) discrepancy is likely due to the fact that African Americans benefit from it, not because they’ve carefully thought of the pros and cons of the policy. If the tables were turned, and Caucasians benefited from AA, then you’ll likely see the same discrepancy the other way around.</p>
<p>“If the tables were turned, and Caucasians benefited from AA, then you’ll likely see the same discrepancy the other way around.”</p>
<p>Of course you would, affirmative action is just favoritism towards one race.</p>
<p>“Because the average African Americans study less than the average Caucasians. But the average Caucasian is also at a socioeconomic advantage”</p>
<p>But why does the LSAT accurately predict the poor performance of black students in law school? And isn’t this the same justification for the low SAT scores of black people?</p>
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What the hell are you talking about? </p>
<p>If the LSATs do a reasonably good job at predicting a student’s performance in law school, then a URM admitted with a low LSAT would on average do worse than the non-URM with a higher LSAT.</p>
<p>“A URM admitted with a low LSAT would on average do worse than the non-URM with a higher LSAT.”</p>
<p>Exactly</p>
<p>Seriously, you need to read the entire argument (sentence) before making a conclusion. Many logical reasoning questions on the LSAT are designed to trick you exactly this way.</p>
<p>FYI Obama has a perfectly fair and logical view on AA:</p>
<p>On affirmative action, Obama, a Harvard Law School graduate, said he thinks that someday when his two young daughters apply to college, they “should probably be treated by any admissions officer as folks who are pretty advantaged” and there is nothing wrong with that.</p>
<p>“I think that we should take into account white kids who have been disadvantaged and been brought up in poverty and shown themselves to have what it takes to succeed,” he added. “There are a lot of African-American kids who are still struggling.”</p>
<p>Obama said that “if we have done what needs to be done to ensure that kids who are qualified to go to college can afford it, that affirmative action becomes a diminishing tool for us to achieve racial equality in this society.”</p>
<p>Well, that’s easy for him to say; his children and his future grandchildren will get into any college they want to attend. Not to mention, it’s rather hypocritical coming from a man who stated that he “undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action.”</p>