Seth Barrett Tillman: Senator Elizabeth Warren & Three E-mails Sent With No Response

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[Dear Professor,]
 
I am sure you have read the news reports about Senator Warren. I am wondering what you think of the position you put forward some years ago. See …, Intersectionality and Positionality: Situating Women of Color in the Affirmative Action Dialogue, 66 Fordham L. Rev. 843, 898 (1997) (“Harvard Law School hired its first woman of color, Elizabeth Warren, in 1995.”); id. at 898 n.284 (citing to …, News Director, Harvard Law School (Aug. 6, 1996)) ….
 
Perhaps a follow up or letter to the editor (at Fordham Law Review) might be interesting and worthwhile. See Fordham Law Review (e-mail); (alt e-mail) ….
 
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8 thoughts on “Seth Barrett Tillman: <i>Senator Elizabeth Warren & Three E-mails Sent With No Response</i>”

  1. I’m browsing through that Fordham Law Review study… holy moly. This section about the possibility of stigmatizing affirmative action beneficiaries:

    To the extent there is self-doubt or stigma among women of color, there are many explanations other than, or in addition to, affirmative action. For example, women of color already may lack confidence because of family upbringing or cultural or social conditioning, regardless of the existence of affirmative action. Furthermore, many women of color have been treated with disrespect and the expectation that they will not succeed – too often self fulfilling prophecies. A large percentage of women of color enter traditional occupations such as housecleaning, childcare, and other service/servant types of jobs. There are few women who look like them in positions of power or looking after them and their interests. These factors are much more likely to cause low self-esteem or stigma than affirmative action, which could give them a boost out of the colored feminization of poverty.

    From colored feminization to drab-gray infantilization, these people went out of the frying pan and into the fire. So women of color (whatever that means) were supposed to forget about working hard and just look up to Elizabeth Warren as a role model?!? I may be wrong, but if I was a minority told that she was the paragon of my particular ethnic group, I don’t expect I would get much of a self-esteem boost, and in fact I would question the sanity of those pushing this nonsense.

    Here’s the good part:

    We would welcome some open doors even with the potential accompanying “stigma risk.” This risk is much more attractive than joblessness or low paying work. Furthermore, any stigma-attached downside to affirmative action does not outweigh the upside of providing opportunities for women of color that would not otherwise exist.

    The utilitarian Left is always weighing the good and bad with the scales of blindfolded Lady Social Justice. Only, as usual, they’re too blind. Institutions becoming color blind made the upside too attractive to keep out con artists. Anybody and everybody could then take advantage of the system. Elizabeth ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’ Warren was able to claim to be a person of color, and everyone just blindly accepted it.

    Think about it. These people are supposed to be the nation’s elites, but they bought her story based on high cheekbones and pow wow chow. The risk doesn’t look so good anymore when Ivy League academics are throwing the dice.

    Any notion of stigma about affirmative action should now be put to rest after the shameful lies of Dances with Warrens. There is indeed a stigma, not only for anyone using affirmative action, but also the institutions that have these programs, and probably the whole damn country. This is a total embarrassment and needs to end.

  2. Institutions becoming color blind made the upside too attractive to keep out con artists. Anybody and everybody could then take advantage of the system.

    How it always is. Racial and other AA preference systems, intended to benefit the truly disadvantaged, always get gamed not only by the con artists but also by high-functioning members of the nominally-disadvantaged classes who are skilled at dealing with bureaucracies and don’t need the help.

  3. Grurray, what you said. Crickets are reported to be swarming at Harvard and Fordham.

    Harvard’s reported claim not to have used Warren’s minority status as a factor in her hire is unverifiable, but not creditable given their touting her as theirfirst “woman of color” as a professor. Where did they get that idea, I wonder? Modification of her nickname: Fauxahontus.

    Death6

  4. Much is made of how inspirational it is that a woman, or person of color, or other disadvantaged person broke a barrier. Is there evidence that this is true, or is it just one of those things that people say because it sounds plausible?

    Well, maybe. I was a poor white kid in a mill city whose father had gone to jail, leading to my mother divorcing him. I think I was inspired by the American idea of advancement for those who were clever or worked hard or were resilient, but i don’t think I ever attached it to “inspired by story of another kid whose Dad was in jail,” or “took heart because great scientist X was also from a broken home.”

    Of course, I had white cis hetero Christian male privilege, so those other things might not have mattered much.

    I recall that when Hillary lost there were women who thought it was a terrible blow to their young daughters. Only if you make it so, lady.

    Oh BTW, those Reform Club emails were excellent trolling.

  5. I just saw this article by one of Warren’s students in the 90s who is confirming that her minority status helped her land the job because Harvard was under pressure to hire persons of color.

    It is unusual for Harvard to make offers of tenure to professors who attended and began their academic careers at Rutgers. To be sure, Warren had worked her way up to a tenured position at Penn, another Ivy League school. And there is no question that she was a much-loved teacher. But in that highly-charged political climate, being Native American could only have helped.

    One thing is certain: Once Warren joined the faculty, Harvard touted her minority status in order to burnish its diversity credentials, listing Warren as a minority in internal documents and compliance reports and telling the Harvard Crimson that the law school had a Native American female on the faculty.

    My question is what did those protesters think of this solution? Hiring Snow White to fill the ‘Woman of Color’ Chair.

  6. always get gamed not only by the con artists but also by high-functioning members of the nominally-disadvantaged classes who are skilled at dealing with bureaucracies and don’t need the help.

    It is very hard to find evidence but I have read that most POCs at Harvard are the children of successful upper middle class or upper class parents, often politicians.

  7. The only thing more preposterous than Lizzy Warren claiming to be Native American is the notion that her getting hired by Harvard had nothing at all to do with her claiming to be Native American.

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