As for whether legacy admits like Bush feel the “pain” of being stigmatized, it’s well known that Bush didn’t really fit in with the academic life at either Yale or Harvard Business, and he always has had an attitude of resentment or dismissal towards intellectual life. (Surely, Amp, you’ve heard this before about Bush.) Isn’t it possible that this conscious rejection of academic achievement is just a defensive mechanism that came from the stigma of knowing that he couldn’t, on his own, achieve at the same level as the other students? Much like the unfortunate but well-documented habit of some blacks to reject academic achievement as “acting white”?

And the Fish quote is just silly: the low self-esteem that comes from wondering if your success was based on merit is probably preferable to the low self-esteem that comes from never getting a chance to succeed in the first place.

This implies that eliminating racial preferences at universities (i.e., ceasing to give certain races extra points just for their race) is the same thing as not giving them a “chance to succeed in the first place.” Which is nonsense.

Bush may or may not have felt pain as a legacy, but it’s certainly not true that wealthy white people as a class seem to suffer from this problem. Whites in general seem very good at not being overly torn up about how White privilege has benefited them. (And rightly so, I might add; I don’t think feeling personal, individual guilt or lack of self-esteem over such matters is a good approach.)

As for the “evidence,” the real question is, what evidence or arguements are presented in the biography itself? I don’t know, and (despite your attempt to speculate about what’s in the book seemingly without having read it) neither do you, Joe.

It’s certainly possible that Thomas didn’t benefit from racial preferences at Yale (although I think it’s clear that he did in his ascent to the Supreme Court). But there is a non-racist reason to believe he did benefit; his biographer, who obviously is not anti-Thomas, says so. If you want to disagree with his biographer, you’ll have to do better than pointing out that he didn’t provide supporting evidence in a fluffy NR interview.

Finally, commenting on what you wrote on the other thread, no doubt racist conservatives do mean to denigrate blacks when they say things like “Well, it’s only because of affirmative action” that they have a job or an honor. But you’re wrong to assume the same thing applies to leftists and liberals.

Liberals might say “he has his position due to affirmative action,” but for a liberal “affirmative action” doesn’t connotate lack of merit. Conservatives assume that those who benefit from AA don’t deserve their positions; liberals believe that AA beneficiaries fully deserve their positions.

So, when liberals say, “Thomas only achieved his position, his law school education, etc., because of affirmative action,” they have no intent of implying that he didn’t otherwise deserve those things? No implication at all? Boy, that’s a new one. I could have sworn that in all the hundreds of liberal op-eds I’ve read over the years about Thomas, the only reason they bring up that subject is precisely so that they can sneer at his qualifications and suggest (or outright state) that he is not qualified to be on the Supreme Court. For the most recent example, read this op-ed from Newsday, where the author says that Thomas is “mediocre,” his qualifications were “meager,” his accomplishments are “unremarkable” and “undistinguished.” And if I wanted to bother, I could show you literally a hundred similar articles, all with the same motif.

As for the Fish point, you say: Joe, the idea that AA has given some people opportunities that they would not have had otherwise is not “nonsense”; and you saying so doesn’t make it so. That is what AA does; it provides opportunities above and beyond those that would have existed in AA’s absense.

Yes, indeed. But that’s not what Fish said. Look at his words again: the low self-esteem that comes from wondering if your success was based on merit is probably preferable to the low self-esteem that comes from never getting a chance to succeed in the first place.

What on earth does he mean by “never getting a chance to succeed”? If Harvard stops using affirmative action, that doesn’t mean that the black students otherwise not admitted have “never” gotten a “chance to succeed.” It means that they go to Berkeley or Virginia instead, where they have the same chance to succeed academically as anyone else at those schools.

I’ve read Andrew Peyton Thomas’s book, by the way. I don’t have it on hand at the moment, so I don’t want to make any blanket statements about what it says, but I definitely don’t recall any actual evidence about whether Thomas got into Yale because of affirmative action.

And I still disagree with this: Conservatives assume that those who benefit from AA don’t deserve their positions; liberals believe that AA beneficiaries fully deserve their positions.

Really? Why do universities like Michigan say that if they wanted to treat everyone equally and yet admit minorities at high rates, they would have to drastically lower their academic standards, and that this would itself be disastrous because it would mean admitting lots of less-qualified people, thereby causing the university to lose its “elite” status?

This is literally one of the arguments Michigan made at the Supreme Court, by the way. Basically, what Michigan told the Supreme Court was this: “When we admit blacks with SAT scores of 900, it’s because those particular blacks are indeed qualified to be here; but if we had to start admitting whites and Asians with SAT scores of 900, it would be a disaster because we would be letting in all these unqualified people, which would cause us to lose our elite status.”

You don’t see the inconsistency in that sort of argument?

Like I said, this boils down to: “If we had to admit everyone at the same low standards that we use for minorities, we wouldn’t be able to be an elite institution anymore because there would be so many unqualified people around.” What else could they mean?

Furthermore, in many cases - such as the Dowd column which started this discussion - it’s clear that Thomas is (unfairly, perhaps) being accused of hypocrisy, not of incompetance.

Although I can’t speak for 100% of liberals, in general it is true that liberals beleive that AA puts qualified people in jobs and universities. To put it overly-broadly, if someone got a job via AA, what it probably means is that (s)he is qualified, and perhaps even prevented an unqualified white man from getting the job due to pro-white racism.

And considering how incredibly inaccurate I’ve found your paraphrases to be in the past, forgive me if I don’t think your unlinked summary of a UMich argument as credible. Give me a link to the specific argument you’re referring to and I’ll comment on it.

Here’s Rosen describing the arguments made by Texas law professors:

[QUOTE]I first encountered the argument that eventually persuaded me to change my mind about affirmative action in a Supreme Court brief filed by three University of Texas law professors in 1997. In the brief, they predicted with eerie accuracy the political pressures that would lead public universities to lower academic standards if the courts prohibited racial preferences. ”If affirmative action is ended, inevitable political, economic and legal forces will pressure the great public universities to lower admission standards as far as necessary to avoid resegregation,” wrote Douglas Laycock, Samuel Issacharoff and Charles Alan Wright. ”The complete end of affirmative action would be a formula for the destruction of the great public universities.” [/QUOTE]

And Rosen quotes from the oral argument in the Michigan case:

[QUOTE]when Justice Scalia asked why Michigan had to have a ‘’super-duper law school,” the university’s lawyer replied that ”there is a compelling interest in having an institution that is both academically excellent and racially diverse.”[/QUOTE]

You can find more discussion in the oral argument transcript, available on the Supreme Court’s website here (pages 31-33).

In other words, Michigan’s lawyer was essentially admitting that if they let in everyone at the same standards that as used for minorities, Michigan wouldn’t be academically excellent anymore. I can’t think what else she could possibly have meant.

Example: White person applies to Michigan. Michigan looks at grades and test scores, and automatically sends out denial letter. Black person applies to Michigan with same grades and test scores. Michigan sends out admit letter. Is that “affirmative action” or a “racial preference”?

I was against Clarence Thomas being appointed to the Supreme Court. I did so because I did not think that his record met even the lowest standards for a judicial appointee. Over the years I have continued to watch his decisions when I can read his opinions. So far my initial concerns have held up. But then, this again is my opinion.

None of the questions about favoritism however would be relevant if there were enough decent paying and interesting jobs for everyone who wants them. That ultimately is the crux of all these issues.

The thing that makes me the saddest is that there is no ‘right’ to be productive written into the bill of rights.

[QUOTE]“There is literally no chance” that significant numbers of minority applicants would be admitted to the law school “under any race-blind admissions program,” according to the University of Michigan Law School brief, written by Maureen Mahoney, a Washington, D.C., partner at Latham & Watkins. Mahoney will argue Grutter for the school.

Ending affirmative action, she adds, would “force most of this nation’s finest institutions to choose between dramatic resegregation and completely abandoning the demanding standards that have made American higher education the envy of the world.” [/QUOTE]

So I don’t buy your whitewash of liberals’ attitudes towards affirmative action. Liberals like the ones defending Michigan’s system most certainly do not think that the standards they use for affirmative action admissions lead to the admission of “qualified” people. If they really thought that, then they wouldn’t be crying about how the sky would fall (no longer being the “envy of the world,” etc.) if they had to use the same low admissions standards for everyone else.

[QUOTE]MSL filed an amicus brief, taking neither side, which made a point that we believe no other brief made. MSL’s brief explained that it is the desire to be elite that causes law schools to have to resort to affirmative action in order to enroll sufficient minority students. That is, desiring to be elite in a profession that is riddled with elitist thinking to a degree unequaled elsewhere, law schools rely largely or predominantly on the LSAT in their admissions processes. They demand high LSAT scores in order to be “elite.” They do this even though they know that minorities have traditionally scored badly on the LSAT and will not be admitted in sufficient numbers when the LSAT is the major determinant of admission. Then, to overcome this elitist predilection which is deliberately built into their admissions processes, law schools engage in affirmative action in order to enroll minority people. Thus, the law schools knowingly discriminate against blacks initially, and then try to mitigate this by discriminating in favor of blacks. They thus discriminate racially twice, instead of adopting a non-LSAT based admissions process that would discriminate against nobody, but would instead consider each person individually and would result in ample admissions of minorities, as at MSL. [/QUOTE]

Are you seriously arguing that every single black person who gets into and gradutes from the U of M law school is the beneficiary of some bizzare conspiracy to make sure they graduate? Becasue thats what it sounds like you are saying. If someone gradutes, then by defintion, they are qualified. Unless you think they are being passed along.

Michigan brief, p. 34: “At this point, however, every race-blind alternative requires a dramatic sacrifice of diversity, the academic quality of all admitted students, or both.”

O’Connor opinion: “But these alternatives would require a dramatic sacrifice of diversity, the academic quality of all admitted students, or both.”

Michigan brief, p. 36: “Setting the bar so low that academic criteria are nearly irrelevant might allow a lottery (or academic-blind subjective review) to produce a racially diverse class, but any such plan would require the Law School to become a very different institution, and to sacrifice a core part of its educational mission.”

O’Connor opinion: “So too with the suggestion that the Law School simply lower admissions standards for all students, a drastic remedy that would require the Law School to become a much different institution and sacrifice a vital component of its educational mission.”

It always seemed like Thomas had been chosen as a justice because he was a very conservative black judge (hard to find), not because he was a truly remarkable or brilliant judge. However, it also seemed (and I was only 11 and may have gotten the wrong impression) that when he was faced by valid criticism, he hid behind his race, accusing his detractors of racism (when it seemed far more likely that their concerns were either legitimate or fueled by partisanship). It was always this impression that bothered me. How could a man who thought racial disparities should not be considered during admissions then blame his problems on racism? How could a man concerned about the stigma Affirmative Action placed on blacks then further such a stigma by deflecting legitimate criticism with cries of “racism” I think the rare black political leaders who try to excuse their failings with cries of racism probably produce far more stigma than affirmative action (this being quite different than political leaders with legitimate arguments about racism). Maybe I am completely wrong; I would appreciate corrections from anyone who remembers these events better.

Anita Hill wasn’t going to testify.

Clarence Thomas’ hearings weren’t going well.

After her testimony, it ceased to be about his lack of qualifications. It was about “finding the truth about these allegations.”

I believe it was the Republicans that brought it all to the fore.

Duh.

No, you don’t have to give them a pass. But come on — at the very worst, Anita Hill was claiming that Thomas had made a few vulgar remarks. Even according to her story, he never threatened her job, he never asked for sex, or anything like that. And of course, even if it was true, she wasn’t too upset at the time — she deliberately followed him from one job (Dept. of Education) to the next (EEOC) without any hesitation. (She claimed in her testimony, with utter implausibility, that she thought she needed to do that, even though as a Yale Law graduate she could have gotten a job at any law firm in America.) And there were literally a dozen women who had worked in the same office with both Thomas and Hill, and they all testified that it was inconceivable that Hill could be telling the truth. (The Democrats decided not to use Hill’s supporting witness, Angela Wright, when it turned out that Thomas had fired Wright for calling another employee a “faggot.”)

The Democratic staffers on the hill were desperate to derail Thomas’s nomination, even though this meant resorting to the flimsy and unsubstantiated evidence that Hill provided in her self-contradictory testimony. In this context, they had to know that they were exploiting the old stereotype of black men as sexual predators.