Why We Need to Talk About Race

I bet that these people all remembered they were black when they filled out college applications in an effort to receive undeserved racial set-asides.

Once upon a time in America, in order to become a lawyer all you had to do was pass the bar. Somewhere around 1896, a black man did just that and became the first person of color to practice law legally in the United States. The response of the academic community was to mandate that a bachelor’s degree was required before anyone could pass the bar. The few people of color who could afford higher education took their new BAs to the their bar exams, and when they passed, a new mandate was set forth that only people who’d acquired a law degree could apply to the bar exam. Deliberate economic prohibitions were placed as obstacles in the path of those seeking lawful, gainful employment. Set-asides would never have been necessary if the playing field were not deliberately made inaccessible by classism, based on racial prejudices.