I have no info on college grades, and don't doubt they were weak. The LSATs were probably pretty strong to get in, even in competition with many other black applicants.
Wikipedia: It is difficult to generalize what percentage of top marks correspond to each of the degrees of honors, given that the percentages or grade point averages required for each rank can differ from place to place or university to university. For example, at Harvard, between 4% and 5% of the graduating class receive summa, while 20% receive either summa or magna.[2] In general, degrees summa cum laude are relatively rare—often reserved for the top two percent of students at the most—and degrees magna cum laude only slightly less so.[citation needed]
I have no idea what you mean by "many other" black applicants, BUT:The median LSAT for admitted applicants at HLS, YLS, and Stanford in 2004 was "about" 170 (I suspect "about" means it was higher).
In 2004, 10,370 blacks took the LSAT examination. Only 29 blacks, or 0.3 percent of all LSAT test takers, scored 170 or above. In contrast, more than 1,900 white test takers scored 170 or above on the LSAT. They made up 3.1 percent of all white test takers. Thus whites were more than 10 times as likely as blacks to score 170 or above on the LSAT. There were 66 times as many whites as blacks who scored 170 or above on the test.
So, 29 blacks in the United States in 2004 had a score that represented "about" the median for HLS. They were competing against >1900 whites. Assuming that all 29 blacks and all 1950 whites applied to HLS,(and no Asians did) for the 556 places in Y1, HLS would admit 548 whites and 8 blacks.
Now, HLS says that 33% of entrants for 2011 are "minorities" - I don't have LSAT data for Asians and "Hispanics", and HLS doesn't make the Asian numbers easily available. We can assume, however, based on abundant other data, that the Asian LSAT mean is HIGHER than the white LSAT mean, so that the numbers -548 whites and 8 blacks - should actually be lower (because of the diluting effect of Asians). Say that 75% of the "minorities" are Asian.
The class is 556. 183 are minorities, SO, whites are 373. Asians are 137. This leaves 46 NAMs, many of who are blacks.
You must therefore consider that either 1) HLS admits (and enrolls) every single black applicant with a median LSAT score, or, 2) HLS admits many blacks with below median scores.
Either way, the idea that "Obama" had "pretty strong" LSAT scores because he competed successfully with "many other black applicants" is not supported by the data.
Is there a link to an official HLS document stating that was Magna in 1991? I googled and couldn't find any official documents.
For an interesting article about Obama’s intelligence, see:
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/05/obama-mythical.html