McCain knows he's the affirmative action scion of admirals who might not have gotten through Annapolis without being a legacy. Obama didn't even tell Harvard Law School that he was black on his application.Is this true? The part about Obama. If so, it's fascinationg
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Then again, his application would have said "Barack Obama" on top; which isn't exactly a typical WASP name.
No, that's an unconfirmed rumor. He's never stated that publicly. Ever. This is the source for the assertion:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/us/politics/03affirmative.html
"Former classmates say Mr. Obama chose not to mention his race in his application to Harvard Law School to avoid benefiting from affirmative action, an assertion that his campaign declined to confirm or deny."
Tip of the hat to Althouse for tracking it down:
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2008/08/what-does-barack-obama-really-think.html
It is interesting if true, but then it doesn't take a genius to figure out that "Barack Hussein Obama" is probably a minority.
An NY Times article reported that:
"Former classmates say Mr. Obama chose not to mention his race in his application to Harvard Law School to avoid benefiting from affirmative action, an assertion that his campaign declined to confirm or deny."
http://tinyurl.com/68hn3d
It seems unlikley that Obama could apply to Harvard as a South Side community organizer and not disclose his race (there must be essays and similar stuff), but it's not impossible.
That is true, but they wouldn't think he was black based on that name. They would think he was Middle Eastern. AA is mostly associated with African Americans. So...point still stands.
I'm not sure, but my guess would be that the AA mechanism would only be triggered by an applicant's questionaire response (it's often a separate document altogether). So Obama wouldn't have been included in the AA pool...On the other hand, his resume & application essays probably signaled his race, so it could have been factored in as one of many "intangible" factors by the admissions officers. If true, I wonder whether Obama's decision was based on anti-AA principle or ambivalence as a biracial about claiming African-American status?
I don't think Dreams says anything about that, IIRC, Obama introduces Harvard in a scene where he tells his partner in the community organizing company that he has accepted a place at HLC and will be leaving.
Most of the conversation is about whether Obama is selling out by going to law school, but I don't recall any discussion of how he got in.
The reason this is fascinating is not because it may have kept the school from applying affirmative action -- law schools, particularly at the Harvard level, have a highly individualized process for selecting applicants from the very broad pool that meets minimum test score/gpa requirements (which I'm sure Obama did). Yes, the school would have gathered much about Obama's ethnicity from his name and, I'm guessing, his personal essay.
The reason this tidbit interests me is because of what it reveals about Obama personally. Did he choose not to reveal his race because he didn't want to benefit from AA? Because he didn't want to be seen as benefiting from AA? Or he may have felt ambivalent about categorizing himself, as many mixed-race people do. Given what we already know about Obama, I think we can be certain that a choice not to specify his race was a measured decision. It may say something about his attitudes toward AA and race more broadly. I'd love to hear him talk candidly on this issue more in the future, but I think his Philadelphia speech is probably as candid as we'll hear him until at least after the general election, whatever the results may be.
Three points: 1. M. Dowd's columns are not always reliable when it comes to facts. See www.dailyhowler.com for a litany of mistatements, usually filled with animus, regarding Gore and the 2000 Campaign and Kerry in the '04 campaign. 2. As J. Mann notes, the NYT article source the story to "former classmates." I remember the classmates being fellow Harvard Law Review members, though I may be wrong about that. Many of these folks are now conservative republicans and may be trying to force Obama into talking about AA on their terms instead of his. 3. On the other hand, many of those conservative HLR members speak very highly of Obama's time as Editor in Chief.
Can we correct one semantic problem? Affirmative action, as defined by the government, is legal and fair. AA, as the government defines it, is taking steps to be sure your applicant pool reflects the makeup of those qualified for the job in the community you recruit from. For example, if you are hiring engineers (as I once did) from a national pool, some percentage of the engineering workforce will be white, black, asian, hispanic, female, etc. So, you try to get an applicant pool that is close to the numbers by AA - i.e. taking postive steps to get applicants. My employer has a variety of programs in place to help us recruit minorities, including going to historically black colleges to recruit, ads in periodicals oriented to women and other minorities, Co-Op programs, etc. So AA just means that you make attempts to get minorities to apply. No harm to anyone that this male WASP can see.
In management training, we were told that using minority status as a preference was only allowable if two applicants were equal in evaluation AND the company was "underrepresented" in that job description. Using minority status as a preference was illegal in any other situation. Disqualification based on protected minority status was illegal, and the company had policies that made it a firing offense to discriminate against non-protected classes (GLBT, etc.). My last three bosses at this company were all protected minorities (female Asian, Black, Vietnam-era veteran), and we have always tried to run our office here as a meritocracy. I've had minorities working for me that had a higher salary due to experience and rare skills sets.
The only time I was hurt by race-based hiring policies was in the case of a federal government agency. My resume was sent over to the HR folks by a senior manager. She was told that I wouldn't be considered as I was "too old, and a white male". Odd that the US Government can do what would get a contractor a fine. I shrugged my shoulders and chalked it up to their stupidity. When they came back a few years later and asked if I was still interested, I said no.
To me, AA is fine. Minority preferences (except perhaps as tie breakers) are not. What I'd like to see, any my employer would like to see, are more minorities with college degrees. Corporate America needs the workers - of all kinds.
The real issue here is McCain, the legacy/affirmative action child of privilege. He should be asked about the silver foot in his mouth at every juncture.
What Obama wrote on his application about his race is much less important than the fact that he earned admission. McCain did not.
Obama and other well-educated African-Americans seem to face a double-edged sword: admit your race on your application and everyone assumes you didn't earn your spot at said school. Omit that information, and everyone assumes you are against AA and don't think it should be extended to others.
In my experience, most intellectual minorities I have met seem to think that AA is great for others and should be continued, but was not necessarily required for their own case. I think that's fair; a black doctor's son from Chevy Chase is far less likely to need a leg up than a kid from a single parent home in Anacostia. Unfortunately, more often than not AA benefits the former, not the latter. Perhaps that is the part of the system that needs to be addressed.
thx for the informative comment, "ech". i dont have much experience with AA because I'm a South Asian in an engineering field, so as I understand it, my ethnicity never came up in college admissions or job applications because we aren't underrepresented in this field. AA as you describe it sounds OK, although I agree with many in the recent web discussions about this that it might make more sense if it was class-based. I think you have a healthy attitude about it.
FWIW--Sen McCain graduated from the Naval Academy ahead of only 5 other grads and then got the most desirable assignment available, Aviation. It is an accomplishment to graduate from the USNA and also an accomplishment to finish Aviation training. Can't take that away from him. But still--if we're talking about favoritism....
How do former classmates know what was in Obama's application?
ECH: THANK YOU!!
What most people are talking about when they disparage Affirmative Action are preferences and quotas. Preferences and quotas are a small and shrinking, if not completely disappeared, subset of AA.
I, too, have done a lot of hiring of PT and Full time staff at private non-profits and state and federal governments. I have worked hard to recruit minorities and women (and since I deal with early childhood education, sometimes those minorities are men) as well as specific knowledge and skill sets by targeting publications, organizations, and schools where members of those populations are disproportionally represented. I have even partnered with local and state education agencies to help create qualified applicants long term. This is Affirmative Action at its best. I have never, nor has anyone I know ever, hired someone because they were a member of a specific group.
The only people I have ever felt pressure to hire were people with political and family connections which is still ripe at all levels.
The big swindle here is that politicians and pundits who try to exploit white resentment talk about AA as if quotas and preferences were the be all and end all and they aren't, not even close. As ECH states in most places these are against the law or company policy. At the same time no one talks about the nepotism and cronyism rampant in most segments of the work force including Conservative Punditry, Hollywood, the Department of Justice, hte Federal Government (never apply for a job with two week open window or less. It is already wired for a friend or colleague of the agency and the ad is pro forma) and, if memory serves, our Nations Military Academy's which still favors legacies and political appointments last I heard (except the Coast Guard Academy) though please correct me if I am wrong.
Problem is, help from parents and friends is still considered acceptable and even admirable in our society, while using demographic criteria is not. Both are far from a pure meritocracy and equally unfair imho, but fighting the latter is a political winner but fighting the former is un-American.
Al asks: "How do former classmates know what was in Obama's application?"
It's called "conversation," Al. It's a method of communication that's superior to grunting while listening to Rush Limbaugh. Try it sometime.
its highly unlikely obama needed any 'boost' from AA beyond his gpa/lsat + experience. he graduated magna from harvard law school -- which is a purely academic distinction for the top 10% gpa-wise.
as a sidenote, the top students are usually magna graduates, since summa's are relatively rare (1-2 a year at most). this is because the cutoff for a summa is a higher-than-A gpa.
it is "Dreams *From* My Father," right? not "Of"?
Correction to jackal:
Harvard Law doesn't give out summas that liberally. Summa is awarded a little more than once a decade (the most recent summa is from 2006; before that 1999 and 1997, an anomaly, as the last one before 1997 was in 1982).
Magna is much more common (about 50-60 graduates each year these days; in Obama's days, magna had a less strict requirement).
Nevertheless, definitely very impressive credentials, and they clearly show that not only did he belong at HLS, but he excelled there.
It figures that I screwed something up in correcting someone else. Apparently grade inflation is rampant now at HLS, as 2007 also saw a summa. That's four in the last eleven years (after a fifteen-year drought).