Harvard email on race goes viral
 

Every time you put something into an email, please remember that someone you send it to may hit Forward. If your email makes the case for a biological reason for racial disparities in intelligence, someone might hit Forward and send it to Black Law Student Associations across the nation.

That’s what happened to a Harvard 3L yesterday. We’ll call this 3L CRIMSON DNA. According to our sources, DNA made some controversial comments about race at a dinner held by the school’s Federalist Society. CORRECTION: This dinner was not an official Fed Soc dinner. [FN1]

After the dinner, DNA felt the need to send an email to a few friends clarifying those views. Here’s an excerpt:

I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. I could also obviously be convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see that they are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances. The fact is, some things are genetic. African Americans tend to have darker skin. Irish people are more likely to have red hair.
One of the 3Ls to receive that email, available in full after the jump, was very upset by it. We’ll call this student CRIMSON OUTRAGE. OUTRAGE arranged for the email to be sent out to the Harvard Black Law Student Association list-serv, including DNA’s name and the fact that after graduation, the author will be doing a federal clerkship.

After that, the email went viral, apparently circulating to BLSAs across the country. There are now plans to try to go after DNA’s clerkship….

UPDATE: We’ve added a statement from the president of the Harvard Federalist Society, after the jump.


We got the email multiple times last night, from lots of first-time tipsters horrified that a person at Harvard Law School with a federal clerkship offer in hand holds such views. The person sending out the email to the Harvard BLSA wrote:

I am saddened that a current HLS student holds such antagonistic and archaic views about our people and that the potential impact of her ignorance is only strengthened by her prestigious affiliations and credentials.



Link

His viewpoints are what they are. That has been said by whites for over a century. Leonard Jeffries had a version of Blacks as sun people and whites as ice people. It's all the same kind of dumb, except the dumb of whites who believe such things (whites are the majority in power and population size) is more likely to transition from opinion and bigotry to discrimination.

It is inappropriate to go after his clerkship solely based on his personal opinions. Let him think what he wants and learn what everyone else knows, which is certain viewpoints are best left for certain environments.

Ice People?

I'm lazy today, so here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Jeffries

It says her in the end of the post. Apparently it's a woman. I agree on the later part. No need to go after her clerkship. Outing her as a bigot may take care of any of that on by itself.

Outing her as a bigot is also dumb. She outed herself as a bigot. What's the point of forwarding the email?

If they had an issue with her bigotry via university email, they should have taken that up with Harvard. If the goal was "now what, bitch" then I guess they succeeded...in making themselves look like they need a hobby.

Did she out herself? Just to one person. That person outed her to everyone else. The thing about lawyers with federal clerkships...they usually have aspirations for public office. This will come back to haunt her someday. That's likely the reason what the goal of the outing was.

Yeah, you out yourself anytime you share an opinion that you know is an unpopular and widely held as offensive.

Lesson learned on her part. She didn't even wait until she got her bigtime career started for this to happen. :)

Yep. Three years of expensive Harvard Law School education...well, I won't say down the drain, but she may not get to have the future she thought she'd have.

She does realize that the same things that she suggested about black people have also been suggested about women, right?

Is she the kind of dummy they are letting into Harvard these days?

Sun People? Ice People?
 

I just have to get this earworm out of my head:

Ice, ice, baby.

Thank you.

(Actually, "Heat Miser/Snow Miser" might be more appropriate . . .)

]http://a.media.abcfamily.go.com/abcf...ynopsis-08.jpg

OMG! I was looking for a picture of Heat Miser for a co-worker last year and couldn't think of his name to save my life! I had that picture in my head because said co-worker made a face and had his hair messed up so that he looked just like the Heat Miser. It was too funny. Needless to say, when I finally found the picture, co-worker was not flattered!

Test scores don't prove ability, only the info that one has committed to memory. Surely you know this but then again, bigots are usually quite dumb.

Not really true. There are tests that have very little to do with memory.

But, why are you replying to that troll?

:snorts:

Should have clarified...thinking more on the lines of the SAT.

Because ya mama needs a hobby.

Unsuccessful people are keeping it unsuccessful. Successful people are keeping it movin' in this thread.

This girl was dumb. According to the article, she sent that e-mail to several people, not just one. Was the young lady who sent it to the BLSA also a member of that org? Was she Black and personally offended? Or was she just telling on the girl to an org that didn't really need to know, but was likely to be horribly offended and turn this into a melodrama if they did?

This happened a couple times at my graduate institution. If some injustice was happening on campus (student housing did something that violated the lease, etc) then someone, usually a law student, would get the other law students involved, knowing they'd cry foul and use their pre-professional legal muscle to threaten such-and-such unless things changed. Honestly, I don't think forwarding that e-mail all over the country was necessary but, given the "viral" nature of the internet, she should have known it was safer to keep her controversial thoughts off the web. I think it'd be more effective to let her skip along to her clerkship, then have her work under a Black judge.

Look what you did! You fed the troll...bad Dr. Phil! You know better:D

Since this has been bumped, albeit by a troll, anyone interested in the original story should *really* read the follow-up.

http://abovethelaw.com/2010/05/the-h...-it-all-began/

Doesn't excuse the content of the email, but I do think it's important to see how this all might have started. And even more, it drives home the message that you should always be careful of what you put in an email, even if you are just sending it to a close friend. 5 months later said "close" friend could become your worst enemy.

:) Occasional troll rules:

1. Know it's a troll.
2. Don't type anything serious.

They don't. End of Story. Now move on.

Before we jump into a "HOW DID AN IDIOT GET INTO HARVARD?!"-a-thon here, I'd really like to see the rest of the email. What she said is fairly silly (if for no other reason than the constant blurring of races that marches forward without ceasing) but the statement is very awkwardly couched, and could be anywhere from MUCH worse to a poorly-phrased example that reveals basic racial bias instead of overt racism.

Like Little32 said, the same statements have been made about women in the near and distant past - and, by and large, we now know those statements are mostly absurd but also partially based in fact, in that women are often predisposed (both based on genetic differences and gender/social roles pushed by society) to excel in certain areas and men in others, in terms of learning, expression and communication. It's not Mars and Venus, but there are subtle yet important differences between men and women. Women are not implicitly stupider (indeed, there's a fairly strong argument that they are predisposed to achieve better in a 'traditional' educational setting than men), but there are genetic differences in learning styles and abilities.

Now, with that said, it's very telling that her Intro to Eugenics argument started with the premise "African Americans may indeed be genetically inferior," for all intents and purposes. It is likely she has some deep-seated racial prejudices, which makes her the norm rather than the exception, but still sucks. It's quite bizarre that this has turned into push to end her clerkship or out her publicly - which makes me think the young lady already had her share of enemies or antagonists (which might be the height of irony, depending on circumstances).