A Preference For Truth

The noblest-sounding justification for racial preferences--that they lift up their beneficiaries--may soon be exposed as fraudulent.

A group of law professors and economists examining the effect of law school admissions preferences on students' bar-exam passage rates is suing the State Bar of California to obtain data for their study. The proposed research could deal a death blow to the quota regime by proving that affirmative action actually damages a student's chances of becoming a lawyer. Predictably, the race industry has mobilized to crush the project.

Lead researcher Richard Sander has already earned the enmity of much of the law professoriate for his pioneering work on affirmative action in law schools. Almost all black students are admitted to law school with drastically lower college and LSAT grades than those of white and Asian students. After their first year of legal education, 51% of blacks are in the bottom tenth of their class; two-thirds are in the bottom fifth. Blacks are four times as likely as whites to fail the bar exam on their first try.