Shockingly, the majority of the ATL readership does NOT think the email was racist. About 65% think it was very offensive or somewhat offensive.

A link, if you can hold your breath long enough to venture over there and cast your vote: ATL Grace Email Poll

Kozinski also doesn’t really follow the party line – he’s kind of Scalia-esque in that his opinions are often snarky and funny, but he’s more independent than Scalia when it comes to actual decisions. He’s a little manic pixie-ish, if you will. The creepy porn thing was creepy, for sure, and totally inappropriate, as well, but he was known for being quirky and off-beat for years before that.

All of which is to say, I would be surprised if he pulled Grace’s clerkship – he doesn’t have any reason to, really, having survived the porn thing (people were calling for him to be impeached), and being a conservative judge, surely he runs in circles where these types of views are espoused. The lesson he learned is the one Ms. Grace is learning now: keep it to yourself. It’s not the content that’s the problem, it’s the dissemination.

On the bright side, however, Kozinski’s clerks work 16-hour days seven days a week. It’s not a summer clerkship, either, it’s a full year, with no vacations. A Kozinski clerkship is one of the most grueling and brutal in the country – it’s the lawyer version of a tour of duty, if you’ve got a family, don’t even bother moving them to Pasadena because you’ll never see them. On the other hand, Kozinski is a feeder judge, which means his clerks have a HUGE advantage when it comes to obtaining Supreme Court clerkships (which is why people suffer through a year in his service in the first place). Can’t you just see Thomas picking up Grace *because* of this email?

This is what Professor Doreen Kimura suggests.

http://www.sfu.ca/~dkimura/articles/Ceci%20Essay.htm

(2007) Why Aren’t More Women In Science? S.J. Ceci & W. Williams (Eds.), APA Books, 39-46.

Do you think that about Princeton bio-ethicist, Peter Singer? He notes that ‘A Darwinian Left’ would not:

“Assume that all inequalities are due to discrimination, prejudice, oppression or social conditioning. Some will be, but this cannot be assumed in every case”

Harvard Psychology Professor Steven Pinker’s 2006 Edge Essay on dangerous ideas entitled “Groups of people may differ genetically in their average talents and temperaments”.

You should follow Professor Steve Hsu’s advice:

“it is important to note that group differences are statistical in nature and do not imply anything about particular individuals. Rather than rely on the scientifically unsupported claim that we are all equal, it would be better to emphasize that we all have inalienable human rights regardless of our abilities or genetic makeup.” (Jan 2007)

As an aside, I recently read an interesting book on this subject called Race in Mind: Race, IQ, and Other Racisms by Alexander Alland. I recommend the book even though it gets a bit heavy in certain sections (e.g., clinal variations):

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=61-9780312238384-1