http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/23/polit...firmative-action-texas-immigration/index.html
Only evidently that isn't so. This is a decision to green light the explicit selection of one person over another based on race. The previous policy of admitting the top X% regardless of race isn't racist. This is racist. This was the case of a white woman excluded because she is white, but I wonder just how much more of us Asian people will be excluded from US schools because we are Asian.
No, the previous system of admitting students was race based, denying admission to minorities and to women because they were minorities and women.
This case was about the University of Texas Law school. There is no reason to believe that higher LSAT scores mean that the candidates are more qualified for admission than a candidate with a slightly lower score. The LSAT scores are used as a threshold of the minimum ability required to learn the subject matter in the time available. All candidates with scores above the threshold are consider to be equal in their ability to absorb the material in the time available.
This is complete bullshit, falsified by science.
When LSAT scores are combined with high school GPA (both factors inherently devalued by any consideration of race), their median correlation with first year GPA in Law School is .48. They are far better objective predictors of how well the student will absorb the material in their college course than anything else, especially than the total bullshit factors that are used instead under the AA policy. In addition, this notable predictive value is even greater for the group of students in question, those not automatically admitted by being in the top 10% of their high school class. The top 10% don't differ much from each other in college GPA, because they mostly all get A's. There is what is called a "ceiling effect" in being able to measure differences in how the top 1% learn compared to that at the top 10%. That means they are artificially constraining the observed correlation between LSAT and college GPA. If those top 10% were excluded from the analyses, the correlation would be notably higher than .48. IOW, two students above a minimum threshold still differ in their ability and willingness to absorb the material in their college courses, and that will and ability are objectively predicted by differences in their LSAT.
Then other considerations, including race to provide minorities an advantage previously denied to them
This is also bullshit. No valid methods are used to determine which applicants actually had advantages denied to them. What they do is confer an advantage or disadvantage to applicants based upon whether they share a racial category with other people in the past who were conferred an advantage or disadvantage due to similar racism.
What your claiming would actually entail not collecting race information at all, but rather collecting only detailed personal information about each applicants history, including parental SES and education, etc..
and because they will be more likely to service their own communities that are underserved by lawyers.
This is a completely separate issue and the only statement that that isn't false, though it is unsupported as to whether it is true. U of Texas could legitimately consider the deficiencies in their communities in term of lawyers serving various populations or areas of law. However, it is not certain that the black community is better served by black lawyers and whether non-black lawyers are not equally willing and capable to provide those services. Regardless, the admissions decisions should then directly ask applicants about and consider their stated area of focus in law school and their professional goals rather than presume that any black lawyer is better for the needs of the black community than any white lawyer. Does a black lawyer who goes to work to defend corporations that poison black communities better serve the black community than a white lawyer with a conscience that defends the poor? Bottom line is if that were the honest actually motive behind such admissions, they could and would get explicitly commitment from those students that they will spend a certain number of years serving particular communities, and then race of the lawyer is a non-issue.
Was Johnny Cochran good for the black community? Was his use of race-baiting to get an obvious murderer off good for the black community? OJ didn't give a shit about the black community, and explicitly denied any connection to it, stating "I am not black, I am OJ." Other black public figures have criticized his failure to do anything for the black community or speak out against injustices. Yet, he got away with murder because a black lawyer used both his own and OJs blackness to convince a black jury that he didn't do it, because he's one of us, and its us against them. That's a slight tangent, but its relevant to your and this policy's assumption that race of the lawyer a critical factor in whether they positively serve the black community.
