How Racial Preferences Backfire

Stuart Taylor reports on a blockbuster study on racial preferences by UCLA law professor Richard Sander:

Sander's blockbuster article, "The Racial Paradox of the Corporate Law Firm," rejects the conventional wisdom that racism explains why most young black lawyers in large firms do not fare well, and why barely 1 percent of big-firm partners -- compared with 8 percent of new hires -- are black.

The paradox, Sander says, is that "aggressive racial preferences at the law-school and law-firm level tend to undermine in some ways the careers of young attorneys and ... contribute to ... the failure of the underlying goal of this whole process -- the integration of elite firms at the partnership level."

Sander's analysis is a natural sequel to his stunning 115-page Stanford Law Review article [PDF] in 2004 showing how the enormous racial preferences used by all selective law schools backfire against black students.

By producing huge black-white gaps in entering academic credentials, these preferences ensure that black students are clustered near the bottom of their classes, with only 8 percent ranking in the top half. This in turn explains why more than 43 percent of entering black law students never become lawyers.

The politically incorrect reading of the day.