Tuesday brought two stories about the pernicious influence of Critical Race Theory or racist "anti-racism" infecting the way law is being taught and practiced in America.  One story concerns a college professor putting pressure on law schools to stop admitting white students.  Another story involves Coca-Cola's lead in-house counsel telling outside law firms that if they want to do business with Coke, they need to hire blacks in huge numbers.  It's extortion, and it's illegal.  But Coke is woke (and getting broke), so it acts with "anti-racist" impunity.

The first story concerns a retired faculty member of the University of Dayton who created this work as a private citizen,* taking her pique at failing to get into law school and turning it into a woke, anti-white project:

If you've been eyeing law school, perhaps you wondered which ones are the whitest.

If so, a teacher at the University of Dayton's got you covered.

She's crafted a report ranking said schools according to the percentage of white first-year students.

But the list isn't only to help you make an informed choice; she wants to encourage colleges to put the kibosh on whiteness overload.

As relayed by Discovery Institute Director Christopher F. Rufo, during a March 4th virtual event, Professor Emeritus Vernellia R. Randall unveiled her "2021 The Whitest Law School Report."

[snip]

And just so you know: "The higher the score, the lower the rank the Whiter the school, the more total whiteness or excess whiteness."

According to the report, called "The Whitest Law Schools," 94% of law schools have reduced their "total whiteness" in the past 15 years. The goal is to measure and encourage additional year-over-year reductions in "Whiteness points." pic.twitter.com/HTDhsAk4kC

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) March 9, 2021

The mission of this program is to measure students by skin color rather than academic achievement. The language of the report is gleefully dehumanizing—applied to any other race, it would be instantly condemned. Law schools would be wise to reject this mode of thought.

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) March 9, 2021

We can dismiss this whiteness ranking as the usual lunacy we've come to expect from academia, except that the next story shows that this lunacy inevitably leaks into society at large.

Bradley M. Gayton is a senior vice president and general counsel at Coca-Cola.  That's an impressive position for someone who got his law degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo, since large corporations like Ivy League types.  I'm certain, though, that he obtained that position not because he's Black, but because he's really good at his job.

Word recently got out to the general public, thanks to a loving tongue bath he got at Attorney at Law Magazine, that Gayton has instituted a new policy for any outside law firms that wish to work with Coca-Cola.  It turns out that Gayton was horrified when he saw that two firms with which he worked had announced new partners who were insufficiently diverse.  Gayton, therefore, announced that, in the future, when selecting firms to work with Coca-Cola, he'll pay attention to cost and competency, but the deal-breaker will be "diversity guidelines."  Paul Mirengoff sums up the guidelines:

The letter demanded, among other things, that these firms "commit that at least 30% of each of billed associate and partner time will be from diverse attorneys, and of such amounts at least half will be from Black attorneys."

This is a problem, given that Blacks are only 12.7% of America's population.  There's one other problem that Mirengoff points out — Gayton's extortion is illegal:

Except in very limited circumstances, it is illegal for an employer to make hiring, staffing, and assignment decisions based on race. It is also illegal for a company to require its contractors to do so. If a company demanded that law firms staff its matters with only White attorneys, no one would deny the illegality of the mandate.

News about Gayton's illegal scheme comes hot on the heels of news about Coke's anti-White training program.  It turns out that Coke has good reason to be anti-White: Whites are opting for healthier drinks over sodas and have a disturbing tendency to legislate their health preferences.  Coke is hemorrhaging sales and hopes that, by showcasing its Progressive chops, it can bring leftist Whites back into the soda fold.  (You really need to read this Daniel Greenfield article on the subject.)

The way I see it, every woke company gives me an opportunity to save my money by not buying its products.  My road trips, which are the only time I drink soda, will now be water and homebrewed tea all the way.

As for progressives' efforts to judge lawyers, not by the quality of their legal acumen, but, instead, by the color of their skin, all I can say is that I'm extremely grateful I graduated from law school several decades ago and have no desire ever to practice law again.  As for everyone else in the market for a law school or a lawyer, the Romans had a phrase for it: caveat emptor (let the buyer beware).

Image: Macon B. Allen, America's first black lawyer.  Public Domain image.

Correction: An earlier version of this piece misstated the person's title and the context of her acts.