When you were in school, I think you were probably in the early 70s. What percentage of your class was black?

I don’t know the exact percentage. But even in 1968, when I went to Yale, it was well known among whites that you’d be much better off if you were black. Even then, people were saying, “Well, gosh, if I pretended to be black, I’m more likely to be admitted.” In fact, the fellow who ran the admissions program at Yale, his name was Inslee Clark. He was famous for trying to get diversity, even then. And I suspect that I was admitted to Yale not because I was such an impressive student, but because I was applying from Japan. That was some kind of perhaps affirmative action for me that was not race-based, but it was part of this idea of getting people from the southside of Chicago, getting people from rural Texas, getting black people, getting Hispanics. I was probably a beneficiary of affirmative action, geographic distribution rather than racial.

It’s the first time I’ve heard that somebody said in the sixties [that it] was better off to be black,

Oh, gosh!

But I think I’ll take your word for it.

Believe me. High school people took that for granted. You’d be much better off if you’re applying for college if you’re black.