Update: Harvard Law Student’s “Racist” Email Controversey
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned…
…by another woman appears to have been another of the overriding messages to emerge from this story. Although the racist element of the controversey was the one that initially caught the headlines, it is the background tale which emerged afterwards that has since taken over.
On the face of it, the email at the centre of this storm is predicated upon a racist subtext but details of the context in which it was written may have rather muddied the water regarding its intention.
According to various reports, the email was sent privately to two friends to clarify a point of discussion but was disseminated several months later in an act of vindictiveness after the sender and one of the recipients fell out – possibly over a boy.
ATL: Steph, Yelena and Jen were very close friends. They would vacation together, spend many days and weekends in each other’s company, and dine together often, along with a few others in the same small social circle at Harvard Law School.
On or about November 16, 2009, the three met up for dinner.
The conversation turned to affirmative action. Steph and Yelena oppose it; Jen is in favor. The three had the kind of argument that all of us have probably had, in college or law school — spirited, engaging, passionate. There was some adoption of perhaps extreme or exaggerated views, to get a rise out of the other participants, in the spirit of law school intellectual bravado.
During the dinnertime debate, Steph did not argue in favor of a genetic basis for racial disparities in intelligence. After the dinner, however, she sent an email — just to Yelena and Jen, not a wider group — clarifying her views. In that email, Steph wrote, “I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent.”
Note the wording of Steph’s email: “I absolutely do not rule out the possibility….” This suggests that, at dinner, Steph actually argued against racial disparities in intelligence. Upon further consideration, she decided to go agnostic on that question, sending out the clarifying email.
And the rest is history.
But the lessons remain – when it comes to putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, you had better be comfortable with the contents because there’s no predicting where your views might end up.
