The “co-deans” of Case Western Reserve University School of Law recently emailed the student body to exult in the fact that their school ranked 144th out of 200 law schools for “whiteness.” That is, Case Western Law School is “less white” than 143 other law schools in the country. The school proudly notes that “we have the ‘least white’ student body of all of the other law schools in Ohio,” except one.
The whiteness ranking is issued by Vernellia Randall, professor emerita of the University of Dayton School of Law. Professor Randall ranks schools by how much “excess whiteness” they have. She explains in her email to the co-deans (which they included in their email to the student body):
Excess Whiteness is the degree to which a law school is more white than the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) Applicant Pools and state population. Thus, excess whiteness was determined by subtracting the school’s total whiteness from the percent of whites in the various application pool. The results were then summed. Of the 200 law schools in this report, 21 Schools (10%) had no excess whiteness, 153 schools (76.5%) had more whites in their first-year class than was in the National LSAC application pool. One hundred twenty-four schools (62%) had more whites in their first-year class than the state applicant pool. One hundred nineteen schools (59.5%) had more whites in their first-year class than was in the regional pool. One hundred and thirty-nine schools (69.5%) had more whites in their first-year class than was in the state population.
Note that irrelevancies such as GPAs and LSAT scores don’t enter into the analysis. Race is the only salient factor.
Lest there be any doubt that this is just an academic data point, Professor Randall explains:
The Whiter the law school, the less the school is preparing the legal community for serving the United States of America’s diverse racial population.
Apparently, white lawyers can’t adequately represent “diverse” clients. If so, can “diverse” lawyers adequately represent white clients?
Some thought we’d achieved peak academic absurdity when math was declared racist. Not even close.
For those interested in how law schools are failing America by enrolling “excess” white students, the research is available here.