{"id":2209,"date":"2006-03-28T20:26:58","date_gmt":"2006-03-29T03:26:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/03\/28\/the-meritocracy-myth-an-interview-with-lani-guinier\/"},"modified":"2006-03-28T20:26:58","modified_gmt":"2006-03-29T03:26:58","slug":"the-meritocracy-myth-an-interview-with-lani-guinier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=2209","title":{"rendered":"The Meritocracy Myth: An Interview with Lani Guinier"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dollars and Sense<\/em> has a terrific interview with Lani Guinier <\/a> (via Blackfeminism<\/a>), questioning how the idea of “merit” has been applied in law school admissions. Here’s a sample, but it’s worth reading the whole thing.<\/p>\n

Relying on things like the LSAT allowed law school officials to say they were determining admission based on merit. So several colleagues told me to look at the LSAT scores because they were confident that I might find something to explain the significant differences in performance. But we found that, surprisingly, the LSAT was actually a very poor predictor of performance for both men and women, that this “objective” marker which determined who could even gain access was actually not accomplishing its ostensible mandate.<\/p>\n

I then became interested in studying meritocracy because of the attacks poor and working class whites were waging against Affirmative Action. People were arguing that they were rejected from positions because less qualified people of color were taking their spots. I began to question what determines who is qualified. Then, the more research I did, the more I discovered that these so-called markers of merit did not actually correlate with future performance in college but rather correlated more with an applicant’s parents’ and even grandparents’ wealth. Schools were substituting markers of wealth for merit. […]<\/p>\n

RP: Can you talk about the Harvard and Michigan studies?<\/p>\n

LG: Harvard University did a study based on thirty Harvard graduates over a thirty-year period. They wanted to know which students were most likely to exemplify the things that Harvard values most: doing well financially, having a satisfying career and contributing to society (especially in the form of donating to Harvard). The two variables that most predicted which students would achieve these criteria were low SAT scores and a blue-collar background.<\/p>\n

That study was followed by one at the University of Michigan Law School that found that those most likely to do well financially, maintain a satisfying career, and contribute to society, were black and Latino students who were admitted pursuant to Affirmative Action. Conversely, those with the highest LSAT scores were the least likely to mentor younger attorneys, do pro-bono work, sit on community boards, etc.<\/p>\n

So, the use of these so called “measures of merit” like standardized tests is backfiring on our institutions of higher learning and blocking the road to a more democratic society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Interesting stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dollars and Sense has a terrific interview with Lani Guinier (via Blackfeminism), questioning how the idea of “merit” has been applied in law school admissions. Here’s a sample, but it’s worth reading the whole thing. Relying on things like the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-affirmative-action","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}