It is only in relative terms, in competition with a vastly improved cohort, that minorities perform somewhat less well. Indeed, here I want to put before you what I really think is the critical proposition. I am only going to feel comfortable speaking with regard to what I shall call the public professions of our society law, government, police, psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, social workers, the kinds of persons who deal with the members of our society at large. I would argue very strenuously that for that group, and I put law at the head of the list simply because I am most familiar with it, being a black person in the year 1996 is a qualification in the fullest sense of the term. Being a black is a qualification to be a lawyer, a law student, a law teacher.
Race remains one of the most divisive issues in American life.
Those are all sky-rocketing figures these days anyway. That is just not as important as this particular attribute of blackness. I have no doubt that if my white male son had an edge of ten points on the LSAT score and two-tenths of a point on a GPA from some good undergraduate college, he would still not be as well qualified as that black male or female coming to law school who is prepared to make a contribution to our society by helping to bridge today's gaping chasm between blacks and whites. Being a black in 1996 is a qualification for the public professions. I leave it to those of you in the hard sciences and the humanities to make judgments about the applicability of all this to your own fields.