Clarence Thomas Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court received an A.B., cum laude, from Holy Cross College, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1974. Justice Thomas served as Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1990, before reaching the highest court. President Bush nominated Justice Thomas in 1990 and was seated as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in 1991.
Justice Thomas has been catching it for his opinion against affirmative action. Justice Thomas must have understood that as long as there are white women, affirmative action is here to stay. Justice Thomas suggests that law schools equal opportunity programs offers no more to African-American students than schools that denied educational opportunities to African-American children in separate but equal facilities. Justice Thomas suggest that law school affirmative action programs are illusory hyperbole that pretends to opens it doors to African-Americans. In fact, such programs is structured to select a few of among the African-American who would not need the constructive diversity program of law schools.
Justice Thomas suggest that public law school need to continues the legacy of fully integrating it schools, by flinging wide its doors, allowing all qualified students to attend their school. Otherwise the school programs limits African-American chances for attending when the school is fully aware that LSAT are bias toward African-Americans and most will not obtain the scores that required to attend their school.
Because of the bias in the testing, the bar is raised to exclude those African-Americans who could otherwise succeed in law school. Justice Thomas suggest that law schools reach beyond its “aesthetic” approach in seating African-Americans if the law school truly believes that a diverse student body is a compelling state interest rather than the educational benefit that school receives from having the appearance that it believes in affirmative action for African-American students.
In fact, Justice Thomas suggests that it is the law school that receives the educational benefits from the diverse student body and not necessarily the students. Moreover, the argument goes that law school academic selective policy is narrowly tailored upholding its elite status by selecting those few African-Americans who would have qualified for admission without affirmative action because of their ranking. The school get to portray the appearance of a racial inclusive school by drawing in African-Americans students who would have been admitted to other schools anyways. Clustering together these students with bells and whistle in attending such prestige school based on scores gives an appearance rather that the schools are working toward breaking down the barriers that will keep the majority of other African-Americans from attending other schools.
The mission of the law school is the cluster giving that certain appearance of a “critical mass” without having to reduce percentage ranking that would be more inclusive in creating the diverse body that the law school proposes to want to achieve. Using the argument used in Bakke, the law school suggest there is a compelling state interest in allowing the school to use race in achieving its goal of a diverse student body. However, the true reason for the use of race is the educational benefit enjoyed by the university.
Justice Thomas has recently remained mute on using race for integrating neighborhood schools.
No comments:
Post a Comment