Do what I say, not what I do--Democrats

According to a 2008 article at American Thinker by Randall Hoven, lawyers and law firms are heavy donors to the Democratic party, with 76% of all donations to Democrats, the same percentage as Hollywood. (BTW, this is a paltry number compared to Democrats in the library profession.)

American Thinker Blog: Lawyers and the Democrats

So why, if they are so liberal and progressive, are law firms doing such a poor job of recruiting African Americans into their profession, even with affirmative action?

According to a completely unrelated article by James Lindgren in the Journal of Contemporary Legal issues, Vol. 17, 2008, "In 1960, 2.0% of male lawyers and judges ages 36-45 were African Americans. After several decades of affirmative action, in 2000 the proportion in the same age group has grown only modestly to 2.8% of male lawyers. Since the 1980 Census (when most African-American lawyers ages 31-65 would have graduated from law school before the era of affirmative action in law school admissions), the changes for African-American men have been even less impressive in employment by private firms and companies: from 1.8% of males in 1980 to 2.1% in 2000."

The Private and Public Employment of African-American Lawyers, 1960-2000 by James Lindgren :: SSRN

And in yet another unrelated statistic from the census, the anecdotal evidence that blacks are losing out in self-employment apparently isn't true either. Without affirmative action, they haven't done that much worse than the lawyers. Self-employed blacks have gone from 3.6% to 4.1% since 1960, compared to 11.1% to 11.4% for whites. It is down for both groups over the last 100 years.