The Prophet of Affirmative Action

[Valin]

Power Line

John Hinderaker

November 11, 2017

 

In the late 1960s, Yale Law School adopted a quota system for African-American applicants. Putting aside its normal criteria for admission, Yale decided that future law school classes would be 10% black, regardless of qualifications. Other law schools and academic institutions did the same thing at around the same time.

On June 9, 1969, California appellate judge Macklin Fleming, a Yale Law graduate, wrote a letter to Dean Louis Pollak questioning the wisdom of the new quota system. Reading the letter nearly 50 years later, one can only marvel at how prescient Judge Fleming was. I recommend the whole thing. Here are some excerpts:

(Snip)

 

Judge Fleming foresaw with remarkable clarity how affirmative action would give rise to the political activism we see today:

No one can be expected to accept an inferior status willingly. The black students, unable to compete on even terms in the study of law, inevitably will seek other means to achieve recognition and self-expression. This is likely to take two forms. First, agitation to change the environment from one in which they are unable to compete to one in which they can. Demands will be made for elimination of competition, reduction in standards of performance, adoption of courses of study which do not require intensive legal analysis, and recognition for academic credit of sociological activities which have only an indirect relationship to legal training.

Second, it seems probable that this group will seek personal satisfaction and public recognition by aggressive conduct, which, although ostensibly directed at external injustices and problems, will in fact be primarily motivated by the psychological needs of the members of the group to overcome feelings of inferiority caused by lack of success in their studies. Since the common denominator of the group of students with lower qualifications is one of race this aggressive expression will undoubtedly take the form of racial demands–the employment of faculty on the basis of race, a marking system based on race, the establishment of a black curriculum and a black law journal, an increase in black financial aid, and a rule against expulsion of black students who fail to satisfy minimum academic standards.

(Snip)