Affirmative action hurts blacks who are entering law school; in fact, the number of black lawyers would increase without race-based preferences, according to a study in the forthcoming issue of Stanford Law Review.
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) law professor Richard H. Sander examined the effects of affirmative action on the success of black students in law school, finding:
The problem with affirmative action, he says, is that it promotes students who are ill prepared for the rigours of law school.
Lucas E. Morel of the Ashbrook Centre notes that the achievement gap between blacks and whites begins in primary grades and continues up through college. Unless the nation’s schools get serious about closing the gap early on, the band-aid solution of Affirmative Action will do little to benefit blacks.
Source: Lucas Morel, The Disaffirmation of Black Law Students, Ashbrook Centre for Public Affairs, November 2004.
For text: http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/oped/more/04/disaffirmation.html
For more on Affirmative Action in Education http://www.ncpa.org/pd/affirm/affirm.html
FMF Policy Bulletin/6 December 2004
