Just a few days ago I was making fun of the big tech companies (particularly Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple) for lecturing us all about their woke and anti-racist values, even as their own performance in hiring African Americans, especially in the tech field, was abysmal. In the midst of endless blather about their commitment to “diversity and inclusion” in frequent publicity on the subject, you then need to dig through reams of numbers to find the unhighlighted facts that Facebook has only 1.5% African Americans among its tech workers, Microsoft 3.3%, and Google and Apple have both stopped providing data broken out this way. Could anybody top these guys for sanctimonious hypocrisy on the subject of race?

I have a candidate for today: high end lawyers. As a group, they are at least as woke and committed to the progressive political project as are the big tech companies. In the major law firms, every single one has a diversity bureaucracy and ongoing diversity initiatives, most have which have been ongoing for decades. And yet, out of hundreds of firms, not a single one has succeeded in achieving the goal of having a proportion of African Americans equal to the proportion in the general population.

You would think that this situation would call for some honest discussion as to the nature of this predicament. Unfortunately, in the current situation, honest discussion is just not permitted. All that is permitted is the ritual recitation of the required mantras of the moment, which of course have long since been proven to be meaningless and ineffectual.

And thus, in my emails today comes one on letterhead of the Harvard Law School Association, with the first line “Enough is enough.” It is signed by two people, one (Daniel Eaton) said to be the outgoing president of the Association, with term ending on June 30, and the other (Christopher Mann) said to be the incoming president, with term beginning on July 1. You can’t get much more Legal Establishment than these two guys. You will not be surprised to learn that the text of the email looks like it was lifted straight out of the official Black Lives Matter phrasebook. I don’t have a link, but here are some substantial excerpts:

Mr. Floyd’s death is part of a decades-old pattern of too many Black men and women being killed in the U.S. by excessive force being deployed by law enforcement officers. We write to share our anguish and outrage, but more important to issue a call for action among our fellow alumni.

Black lives matter. George Floyd’s life mattered. The horrific way George Floyd’s life was extinguished matters. . . .

As the outgoing and incoming Presidents of the HLSA, we commit the HLSA to anti-racism in the core functions of the Association:

• its programming and events, to include a broader range of voices and topics; 

• the strengthening of the relationships among alumni and supporting mentorship between alumni and students, especially students of color; and

• promoting the school to prospective students.

The HLSA will be working to develop programming to convene a dialogue among key stakeholders from within our HLS community to address issues of racial justice and the rule of law. . . .

Yes, some 40 or more years into “diversity” efforts with little to no success to show for it, we are now going to “develop programming” and “convene a dialogue.” I also particularly like the idea of “promoting the school to prospective students.” Are we to believe that there are large numbers of qualified African American college students interested in becoming high end lawyers but they just haven’t heard of the Harvard Law School?

After reading the email, it occurred to me to look up who these guys Eaton and Mann might be. It turns out that Eaton practices in San Diego with a firm called Seltzer Caplan McMahon Vitek. The firm has 33 lawyers listed on its website. They have pictures of all of them. Not one is African American. [Update: See below. Mr. Eaton is himself African American.. This makes the percentage of African American lawyers at Seltzer Caplan 3%.] To be fair, several of the lawyers have Hispanic surnames (Arias, Ceballos, Gouzoules, Martinez, Vega); but from their pictures only one is other than completely white. Mann, meanwhile, is a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York. You may recognize that name as among the most prominent of corporate law firms, famous for representing Goldman Sachs and many other major companies. S&C provides annual demographic data for the firm to something called the National Association for Law Placement. Here is the version for 2020. On the most recent form, S&C lists 172 partners, 575 associates, and 126 “counsel.” Of African Americans, they have 3 partners (1.7%), 11 associates (1.9%), and 1 “counsel” (0.7%). Really?

In the real world, trying to recruit substantial numbers of qualified African Americans into high paying jobs like those at these two law firms is a very difficult challenge. Sufficient numbers of candidates with the appropriate qualifications and potential to succeed simply do not exist. The best efforts of these and dozens of other law firms over many decades have barely moved the needle. And, as much as I often disagree with the politics of these people, I do not doubt their good faith in attempting to hire African Americans with the potential to succeed in this very competitive business.

But let’s be honest and admit that newly committing to “anti-racism” (whatever that may mean), or “developing programming,” or “convening a dialogue” are just meaningless words and gestures that will accomplish little or maybe even nothing. This is a long term challenge that will require a sustained commitment, and still may well not come close to succeeding in my lifetime.

UPDATE, June 24: An ex-partner of mine emails to inform me that Mr. Eaton is himself African American. Obviously, this is a significant error in the post as originally written. In my defense, I had looked at Mr. Eaton’s picture, and did not guess that he was African American. With Mr. Eaton counted as African American, the percentage of African American lawyers at Seltzer Caplan would be 3%. Incidentally, my ex-partner also speaks highly of Mr. Eaton as a lawyer.