Legal education
Thomas entered Yale Law School, from which he received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1974, graduating in the middle of his class.[25] Thomas has said that the law firms he applied to after graduating from Yale did not take his Juris Doctor seriously, assuming he obtained it because of affirmative action;[26] Dean Louis Pollak wrote in 1969 that Yale Law was then expanding its program of quotas for black applicants, with up to 24 entering that year under a system that deemphasized grades and LSAT scores.[27] According to Thomas, the law firms also "asked pointed questions, unsubtly suggesting that they doubted I was as smart as my grades indicated."[28] In his 2007 memoir, Thomas wrote, "I peeled a fifteen-cent sticker off a package of cigars and stuck it on the frame of my law degree to remind myself of the mistake I'd made by going to Yale. I never did change my mind about its value."[29]
Assuming that Thomas had a good LSAT score, the combination of his record at Holy Cross and his life story might well have been enough to get him admitted to YLS were he white. Based on my observations, he might have gotten in on that basis in the 1990s – a time when admissions standards were probably slightly higher than in the 1970s because by that point Yale had regained its standing as the generally acknowledged no. 1 law school (a position it had arguably lost to Harvard in the 70s).
As liberal constitutional law scholar Mark Tushnet documents in this article, Thomas’ opposition to affirmative action is not based on the view that it is intrinsically unjust to whites, but on his belief that it does blacks more harm than good in the aggregate. For reasons I discussed in detail here, it therefore would not be unethical for Thomas to benefit from affirmative action while personally opposing it. In fact, however, it is possible that Thomas had good reason to believe that he might have gotten to YLS even without the benefit of affirmative action. If that conjecture is right, then affirmative action was a net loss for him in that phase of his career (though it probably helped him later in the Reagan Administration). Its existence led potential employers and others to doubt his abilities, without helping him to get into Yale.
Kobe is claiming he only got where he is due to affirmative action which is racist on its face
50 years layer that hasn't changed