The Plight of Pale Colored People
The Macomb Daily has this article about comments made by Frank Wu, dean of the law school at Wayne State University. The article describes Wu’s opposition to the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would “prohibit public institutions from discriminating against groups or individuals due to their gender, ethnicity, race, color or national origin.” The initiative is in response to the decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, which many (e.g., the ABA) interpret as a green light to ignore Title VII.
The Detroit Free Press has this article about Wu’s comments. The article is written by Dr. H. Sook Wilkinson, chairwoman of the Michigan Governor’s Advisory Council on Asian Pacific American Affairs, past chairwoman of the Council of Asian Pacific Americans of Michigan, and spokeswoman for the Korean American Community of Metro Detroit. Wilkinson notes that, “In the private sector, Asian Pacific comprise 7.3% of the professional workforce, but only 2.8% of administrative or management personnel . . . .” What Wilkinson doesn’t say is that when 4.2% of the population holds 7.3% of all professional positions, then the group has achieved far more than its fair share (applying the same argument that says it’s unfair for 80% of the population to hold 95% of the partnership positions at law firms).
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According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, last year, Asian Americans comprised 4.4% of the total workforce, and held 4.2% of all management positions. They comprised 6.6% of all professional positions, 24.6% of all computer programmers, and 17.3% of all physicians and surgeons. According to the bureau, 2.0% of all lawyers practicing in the U.S. last year were Asian, but 4.6% of all “judges, magistrates, and other judicial workers” were Asian.
According to the ABA, there are 1,104,766 lawyers in the U.S. But the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA) says it represents over 40,000 Asian American attorneys. If true, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is wrong; something like 4% of all attorneys in the U.S. are of Asian descent (assuming NAPABA includes just about every Asian American Attorney (or AAA) there is).
According to ABA statistics, there were 140,298 students attending 191 law schools in the past academic year, and 29,768 of those students were considered minorities. Of those 29,768 minority law students, 11,252 were Asian, and 8% of all law school students, as well as 37% of all minority law school students, were Asian.
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If the goal of diversity initiatives is proportional representation, then, it could be argued, those initiatives should begin to dissuade Asians from entering the legal profession. Of course, not everyone will agree with that; proportional representation can be a burden to some, and they can argue against it in some cases even if they argue in favor of it in others.
Consider this article in which Dean Wu is quoted talking about the risks that proportional representation holds for Asian Americans. Or consider this speech Wu gave, when he claimed the quest for diversity is never ending, that it continues far beyond any amount of fair representation. Better yet, consider the long running dispute at the prestigious Lowell High School in San Francisco where Asian Americans consistenly argue against diversity (and contrast that with the arguments made in this amicus brief, filed in Grutter v. Bollinger on behalf of a host of organizations representing Asian Americans, which argues in favor of diversity).
This appears more self serving than noble — arguing in favor of diversity when it favors your group and arguing against it when it doesn’t. To hear Dean Wu tell it, when race-based admissions policies at law schools favor Asians, they’re good; when they don’t, they’re unfair.
What’s new?
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The Diversity Crusade yields peculiar results that are completely at odds with Title VII. Two new immigrants arrive in the U.S. — a woman from Hong Kong with money and a man from Palma without. They both want to become lawyers. One benefits from a minority scholarship offered by a large law firm; the other isn’t eligible. After the woman from Hong Kong receives her J.D., she is courted by major firms; after he receives his J.D., the man — considered white even though he’s five shades darker than the woman who has learned to refer to herself as a ‘person of color’ — is shunned because those same firms just can’t hire another white man if they want to continue to do business with Wal-Mart.