Cancellation has become so frequent that there’s a tendency to note the latest example perfunctorily and move on, hoping you’re not the next victim.
Last week’s termination of Professor Sandra Sellers of Georgetown Law School bears more than a perfunctory mention. In what she thought was a private conversation with a fellow faculty member after a virtual class, Sellers said, after discussing the performance of a black student in her mediation class:
You know what? I hate to say this, I end up having this angst every semester, that a lot of my lower ones are blacks. It happens almost every semester, and it’s like oh, come on. You know, we get some really good ones but there also are usually some of them that are just plain at the bottom.
Unbeknownst to the professors, the conversation was still being recorded and was uploaded, along with the rest of the class, into a digital database with the appropriately dystopian name Panopto. A few weeks later, the Georgetown Black Law Students Association became aware of the conversation and immediately began calling for Professor Sellers’s head. BLSA claimed:
These racist statements reveal not only Sellers’ beliefs about black students in her classes, but also how her racist thoughts have translated to racist actions. Professor Sellers’ bias has impacted the grades of black students in her classes historically, in her own words.
That, to put it conservatively, is a heckuva lot to glean from Sellers’ statements. Nonetheless, Georgetown fired Professor Sellers, put the other professor on leave, and engaged in the customary ritual abasement to try to get this to go away.
Of course, there’s one question that’s almost never asked (at least publicly) after one of these incidents: What if the statement accurately describes relative black student performance?
Universities and law schools guard information about the comparative qualifications of admittees from different racial groups more tenaciously than the military guards nuclear launch codes. Absent state disclosure laws (for public universities) or legal action, not one college will release this information. We can, however, get a fair idea of whether there are appreciable differences in academic qualifications among different racial groups by looking at historical information about Georgetown’s practices, as well as those of other schools.
Althea Nagai of the Center for Equal Opportunity has spent years studying racial disparities in undergraduate and law-school admissions. She’s studied law-school admissions at the University of Oklahoma, University of Wisconsin, University of Nebraska, University of Utah, University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and University of Michigan. Every single one of these law schools admitted black applicants who were significantly less academically qualified than white applicants. Dr. Nagai found:
In all 15 cases, the median LSATs of white admittees were greater than the medians of black admittees. The largest differences were found at Nebraska in 2006 (a 12-point difference), Wisconsin in 2006 (11 points), and Nebraska in 2007 (10 points). The smallest gap in median LSAT scores between white and black admittees was at Arizona State in 2007 (5 points).
In all 15 cases, the college GPAs of white admittees were greater than those of black admittees. Here too the largest black-white difference was found at Nebraska in 2006 (a 0.6-point difference), followed by Arizona in 2006 and Arizona State (0.5 of a point). The smallest difference was at Arizona in 2005 (a 0.1-point difference).
There’s no reason to think that Georgetown Law is immune from giving racial preferences to black applicants. For one thing, we know that they were giving preferences to black students as far back as the late 1980s. As my colleague Gail Heriot recounts in her upcoming book, A Dubious Expediency, a Georgetown law student working in the admissions office found evidence in 1991 that there were stark disparities in the academic credentials of admitted black and white students (and no, the white students weren’t the ones getting preference). Then, as now, a firestorm erupted at the school and spread to the nation’s elite media institutions when the evidence was disclosed. Some truths are just too inconvenient to acknowledge.
Why do racial preferences in admission matter to the case of Professor Sellers? Because, quite simply, if a student is admitted with lower academic qualifications than his classmates, he’s likely to continue to perform at a lower level than his classmates in law school. Students rarely “catch up” to their better-prepared classmates. Rather, as Rick Sander and Stuart Taylor detail in their book, Mismatch, these students are likely to fall further behind. When members of one racial group are mostly admitted with a racial preference, they start out in the lower part of the class, and they’re likely to stay there. That circumstance then is used as evidence of “systemic racism,” justifying even more preferences. And the cycle repeats.
Increasingly, the expression of facts — not just opinions — that offend elite sensibilities are being weaponized against us. Truth is no longer a defense.
Maybe these lazy black should try a little harder rather then complaining because they are not getting a free ride
The problem was that she spoke the TRUTH!
In this woke age, follow the restrictions that were placed on anyone dealing with National Security: Never say, or write, anything that you don’t want to appear on the front page of The New Washington Post!
Mixed race Attorney wannabe Kamala Harris failed the California Bar Exam on her first attempt while white Amy Coney Barrett was at the top of her class and passed it. Is that racist or factual?
If at first you don’t succeed blame it on somebody else. Carmela will redeem herself after she eliminates racism. If she needs funds and the government runs out of ink, she might want to consider freezing bank accounts of the top 5% of her supporters. There’s no guarantee but she will surprise us nonetheless 😱
This trend has permiated our culture and the results are being ignored. Just look at the quality of education in our school systems. It’s not my fault; racists have done it to me is the battle cry. Volumes can be written about this but the only thing minorities are being taught is “it’s not my fault”. All of this progressive stupidity will be sorted out hopefully before hell freezes over. The mentality of you owe me doesn’t produce results – hard work, determination and striving for excellence is an environment devoutly to be wished. Kamela will have her chance as soon as she retires the most incompetent president this country has ever seen. Maybe Georgetown university can re-educate him.
if al else fails cry racism.
It sure is convenient to avoid facts when making accusations. If a group of people, and we are not going to use the word race because every person on this planet is in the same race, of different physical characteristics perform at lower or higher standard than is the norm and does so consistently, then that can be assumed to be a fact. If people want to ignore the facts (truth) about performance, or actions, by any group and try to change other groups who perform at higher standards, then they are a cause of the problem because they do not take to task those that do not perform as well. Bring the performance of under achievers up. Do not bring the achievements of those that perform well down just to make the lower achieving group fit in.
My dad used to have a sign that said, “My mind is made up, so don’t confuse me with facts”. How true that can be.
I posted – The Reich of the Republican Party – Heil Trump – I got thrown off You Tube (Maybe I spelled Heil wrong – I’m not racist – I’m Just Negro Phobic
hey, ignorant, the demonrat party is following right in lockstep with hitler. Some people just to stupid to see it
YEARS ago in Hartford, Connecticut (i believe )firefighters took an exam for promotion.white,black and Hispanic. the whites and Hispanics did well but the blacks didn’t. so they threw out the results and NOBODY got promoted. BECAUSE the blacks did poorly. sorry you’re not getting promoted. keep lowering the bar and you’ll have to crawl under it so that stupid people WON’T be throwing a HISSY fit.
5 things liberal socialist demonrats hate: GOD, GUNS, TRUTH, FACTS and anyone who uses the last 2 to prove them wrong
From one end to the other. Instead of the usual bigotry of low expectations, it’s the bigotry of racial preferences and unreasonable expectations. Sadly, both are just as corrosive.
The final problem of this poor education is the rest of us think these people are smart and know what there doing. There not smart intellectually, there smart mouthed ,and smart assed. This poor performance isn’t really there fault they were born that way To do racial preferences in schools picking people of color over Caucasian will never ever be right, it really puts people of color ,to be racist over white people So who do we pick to represent or operate for us someone at the bottom or the top of the class.
There. They’re. Their.
Please learn the difference before posting about poor education.
It’s the there their they’re police again. Stop it please
Facts are undeniable. Blacks ARE less intelligent, less ambitious, less everything positive; and more of thuggery, laziness, and whining!
The greatest mistake the United States ever made was importing cheap labor from Aperica!
This state of affairs could be seen in advance by the average person during the early or mid 1970s when affirmative action was started. It was perpetrated and evaded deliberately. If one group is to be favored over another, this is automatically the outcome, like adding 2+2 unless, maybe, the favored group is favored only when one of that group is equally qualified with one of the other group, but never when less qualified.
As Rush Limbaugh always said……….the communist, fascist democrats could never win in the “arena of ideas”, nor in the area of debate. So calling people racists gives them instant satisfaction and an end to the conversation, while winning the debate in their puny little mind