If you haven't heard about this, well the story is in the posts. But basically, Stephanie Grace (pictured above), a Harvard 3L who's clerking for Kozinsky on the 9th Circuit next year, wrote an email idly wondering if maybe black people are genetically less intelligent than white people. She at least hasn't seen conclusive evidence that they're not... Sigh. Ok, then people like David Lat over at ATL proceed to say that all discussions should be open for rational debate, and we shouldn't overreact and try to ruin her life and such, and especially shouldn't name her. (Whoops?)
I just wanted to quickly share two long posts that I pretty much agree with completely (taken for what it's worth, me being a white guy and all). First Elie Mystal at ATL takes a break from writing about law firm gossip and gets pretty friggin angry about the whole situation, specifically Harvard BLSA's incredibly cowardly reaction to it and his colleague's assertion that essentially we shouldn't take offense to racist rants, and shouldn't call them out as racists.
Since I think it is pretty uncivilized to suggest that men and women of one skin color are genetically incapable of intellectual achievement on par with another skin color, I think the academic discussion of such a possibility to be God Damn far beyond the pale.He also writes, about law school:
Yet I’d agree that most arguments can be amenable to rational debate, regardless of the argument’s position inside or beyond the pale.
However, it is sheer ludicrousness to expect, nay demand, that some arguments be proffered without the expectation that someone else may well take offense. If you insult me, my mother, my family, and my entire race in the cloth of academic debate (as one does when one suggests that we are just not as smart as white people), then you best believe that offense will be taken. To use a simple analogy: if you slap a man’s wife on the ass, you better be prepared for the husband’s counterattack. He probably won’t have an academic view of the situation.
I learned that the overarching point of high-level legal analysis is to say something that somebody else has said before. I learned that “I have a great idea” is frowned upon, while “I’m sure that a dead white man had this idea already” is rewarded. I learned that engaging with a dumb question makes you look smart, while refusing to accept the premise of the same question makes you look like you have something to hide.Jill at Feministe has a further post on the topic that goes further into the shitty straight-white-male dominated law school/legal culture that teaches us to only think about consistency and never justice. To ask questions about what law means rather than whether it's right. It's the same bullshit that actually convinces people that colorblindness in law is the right answer - we're taught to look at the law and make the law perfectly consistent, rather than using the law to make society perfectly just. It's bullshit, and she gets into it pretty well.
Harvard Law School is no stranger to racial controversy. I am soliciting a guest-post from an HLS grad who will hopefully be able to delve more into that issue, but suffice it to say that something like this happens almost every year. And Harvard is certainly not alone among law schools in dealing with racist and sexist controversies. I’m not entirely sure what it is about law school that encourages the kind of behavior that Stephanie Grace exhibits here and I didn’t go to Harvard for law school, but I suspect it’s some combination of students with fairly sheltered upbringings and homogeneous social circles, an academic emphasis on logical consistency over actual justice, and an environment where discussions are so hyper-intellectualized that students feel they can say anything so long as they can give it a veneer of logic and rationality.This is a real real problem that caused the development of critical race theory, which asks how restricting our legal discourse is with respect to race, especially considering the "default," the "lack of color", is white. Incidentally, the CRT movement was started at Harvard - perhaps there really is something about that place. Anyway, this problem really needs to be addressed, and legal culture needs to be changed for good.
Yes, racism is everywhere. It is in law schools, and it is in law students before they ever get to law school. But it plays out in law schools in a very particular way. Law schools are environments that traffic heavily in discussions about logical consistency. In class, you read and discuss cases that all work off of each other in developing law. You start with one basic theory or set of laws, and then look at how the courts apply those theories to new sets of facts and circumstances; you look further down at how the courts use the outcomes of previous cases to draw conclusions in subsequent ones. Law school trains you to think in a particularly linear way — not “what is just here,” but “what is consistent here.” Often, consistency is the closest we can get to justice, and it offers a way to evaluate our laws in light of varying circumstances. It at least attempts objectivity. It’s a helpful way to learn how to think, and it certainly helps in the practice of law.
But it’s also a fairly narrow way of thinking, in a lot of ways. It eliminates, or at least lowers the value of, concepts like justice and social privilege and real-life inequality. In other words, while it is a helpful tool to use in order to be an effective attorney or advocate or debater or writer or thinker, it cannot be the only tool in your chest if you strive to be not only effective, but also conscientious.
For some law students — and for some lawyers — it seems to be the only tool in the chest.
22 comments:
Great post, Andrew. I commend you for bringing this to light.
Sadly, I've encountered this in law school...and even after...this attitude is so debillitating for the black student as one has to work twice as hard just to prove that one is "equal"...
I agree with the Feministe blogger who notes that law school is particularly ripe for racism because many of the students are coming from privileged, sheltered and homogenous backgrounds...where they have had the luxury to not even see or have to think about inequality or where they have been deprived of the chance to interact with people of color (other than the stereotypes they see on television).
Further, the blogger noted that law school's focus on "linear" or "rational" thinking is also to blame. Law students aren't thought to "question" why things are the way they are, but rather to "accept" the status quo and to enforce it. The concept of "stare decisis" is but one very telling principle of this philosophy. Absent from the discussion is the impact of America's legacy of slavery and racial discrimination/subjugation.
If Ms. Grace were better read she might have read studies that have shown that there is virtually no difference in academic achievement between whites and blacks who were born *outside* of the U.S.(the argument being that those blacks are less likely to have experienced crippling racism at a young age and are better equipped to deal with it even when they confront it at a later age). She might also have learned the concept of "stereotype threat," a proven social phenomena in which people (of all races) might feel pressure to act in ways that conform to the stereotypes hoisted upon them (See Claude Steele's wealth of research on this).
I'm glad that she isn't being allowed to hide the racism of her remarks under the veneer of "intellectualism." Her questions aren't just "academic," they are insulting to the many intelligent and accomplished black people whom she obviously has not had the pleasure of meeting.
Andrew, apologies for skimming and maybe missing it but, do you have a link to the original email?
No problem Jessica. It's copied in full within the original ATL post on the subject.
It's your perogative to act offended, of course. But don't misrepresent the email:
1) There's a difference between a statistical genetic difference between races and a universal difference. And intelligence is only one of many factors in success. So claiming a statistical difference is a long way from "men and women of one skin color are genetically incapable of intellectual achievement on par with another skin color."
2) The author of the email does not claim that there is a difference, only that it is a position that ought to be ruled out scientifically, not based on who gets offended by it. There are plenty of inheritable traits that correlated to race. And there is certainly an inheritable component to intelligence. Of course, that doesn't mean inheritable intelligence correlates to race, but it isn't inconceivable either.
3) The email acknowledges (admittedly too begrudgingly), that even if there is a genetic intelligence difference between races, that social factors play a far more important role.
With that said, it does seem pretty easy to read some latent racism, or at least severe lack of tact, on the part of the author. Any question about race or intelligence is a hard question to pin down scientifically, let alone one that combines the two. The author comes off as too enthusiastic that this possibility is just that, a possibility.
First, allow me to say that if you're going to accuse me of "acting" offended and intentionally misrepresenting the substance of my post, at least have the decency to leave a name that I can respond to.
Now, more to the substance of your comment. I have no idea what you mean by this: "There's a difference between a statistical genetic difference between races and a universal difference." No one claimed that she thought every black person is an idiot, and no one would need to to show the racist thought behind the email. When speaking about the inferiority of a group en masse, as she did, the use of statistics is the only language that makes any sense. To hide behind the defense that she didn't say all black people are individually inferior honestly makes me question your leanings, oh anonymous commenter.
Anyway, the idea of genetic differences has been debated, scientifically tested, and refuted many many times. To constantly bring it up as not having dismissed the possibility is absurd and everyone should be offended by it. One of the articles I linked to likened (in purely academic terms) to having an open debate on whether the Earth is flat. I mean, if someone remains unconvinced, people will just laugh at them, because it's a well settled issue. I guess we could have a debate on the issue, but it's really not worth anyone's time. Of course, saying the Earth is flat doesn't insult an entire group of people (discounting thinking people as a demographic), so it has a different result. So where you're saying it ought to be ruled out scientifically, I (And most everyone else) say that it already had.
You come off sounding as bad as all her defenders, basically saying oh, she was probably racist because she was enthusiastic about the possibility. No, considering the possibility even in some way legitimate is racist as well. Period.
"Anyway, the idea of genetic differences has been debated, scientifically tested, and refuted many many times."
So I was personally ignorant of any at all studies. However, a quick look at the Wikipedia seems gives a pretty different view from your comment:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence
From this article I get the impression that there is little scientific consensus one way or the other.
That's interesting, except that the article has factual inaccuracies and systemic bias problems, according to wikipedia. And I can tell you that any article based on IQ for this tests makes no sense anyway, given environmental influences. In fact, in the "talk" section most of the debate is about some guy who removed all the stuff about environmental influences in an apparent edit war. I suppose I could be wrong about the number of studies on this, though I'd buy into the a priori impossibility of the race-intelligence link, given race is a social construct, and quantifying intelligence is a dubious concept.
Does this not brake free speech? i should be able to have my own opinions and share them with my close friends (im sure the friend who leaked the letter isnt a friend any more).
She is too young too know any better and shes probably just confused about genetics and DNA.
so try to cut her some slack before you unleash the internets on her please.
Who said anything about "free speech?" The idea of free speech is that you are permitted to speak - the government cannot censor you. The counterpart to that idea is that people rely on other speech to counteract it. So if you speak like an idiot and a racist, people will call you an idiot and racist. That's how the "marketplace of ideas" works. It's not a bug, it's a feature.
And so it's ok to be racist as long as you do it in private? Hell no. Sure, whoever leaked the email to BLSA probably isn't her friend any more - still don't know what that has to do with us.
And she's too young? It's funny, your comment sounds like an appellate brief for her case, pleading all these arguments in the alternative just to see what sticks. She's graduating law school - 25 at least. And she's going to be writing 9th Circuit opinions next year for Kozinski. If she's too young to know better, isn't she too young for that kind of power?
[edited for clarity]
"Does this not brake free speech?" [sic]
No one is abridging her free speech rights. Part of free speech is taking responsibility for your words and hearing others' free speech in response. I haven't heard anyone say she should be censored.
"She is too young too know any better ..."
Let's remember: she isn't some kid in high school or college. Stephanie Grace is an adult with what is ostensibly one of the finest educational pedigrees in the world, in her last year of law school, about to clerk on the 9th Circuit.
She's months away from being able to legally defend others in a criminal trial and, in fact, being an officer of a Federal Circuit Court. We can argue back and forth on the substance of what she said, but I don't think anyone can credibly call her "too young to know better."
I'm a nerd and this is too long so I had to post it in two parts... PART 1
Great post. 2 comments:
1) This goes less to the heart of your post, so I'll start with it. While I agree with the substance of Elie Mystal's post, the analogy (pasted below) is incredibly sexist:
"if you slap a man’s wife on the ass, you better be prepared for the husband’s counterattack. He probably won’t have an academic view of the situation.."
Essentially the point seems to be, that it’s "objectively" reasonable to assume that if you assault a woman you will have to respond to her husband's anger at your violation of his property interest in his wife's body. The response of the subject of the oppression, i.e. the person who was actually violated, isn't what you should be concerned with, and whether or not she has strong feelings about being assaulted (like her husband does) wasn't even relevant enough to mention. I won't even go into my feelings about calling the female partner the "MAN's wife" and the male partner "THE husband." Suffice to say I don't think it is an accident that the woman was named by the way she related to her husband, and the man was named by a status of which he is the subject. At its heart this analogy says, women are property, and because its common sense for men not to want to have rationale discussions when you violate their property, it’s also common sense for people not to want to have rationale discussions with you violate their interest in being treated as equals intellectually.
In any event, I know you didn't make the analogy, and so this is more food for thought than anything else. The point I guess, is that it’s important for people like Elie (and maybe the people who forward her post) to be careful not to affirm sexism when you are trying to combat racism.
2) As far as whether publicly defaming Grace is the right answer:
I think that it’s the wrong way to go for the same reason I think hate crime laws are the wrong way to go. It isn't that she isn't a bad actor, she is. But she is also not the actual problem- she is a symptom of the problem. Focusing on her is (1) distracting, (2) wastes energy that could be directed at combating structural racism and (3) affirms people who deny that structural racism exists’s beliefs that racism is a problem caused by a few bad actors, and thus can be adequately addressed by shaming/getting rid of/defaming those few specific bad actors. In short form, focusing on a Harvard student who harbors racist beliefs is putting energy in a direction that doesn’t really change anything for people who are racially oppressed.
This could have been a really great opportunity to ferret out why Grace has the beliefs she has and then have a rationale dialog with the broader community about why those beliefs are harmful. Because at the end of the day, she got those ideas from somewhere and that somewhere is what needs to be addressed. Whether or not Grace is a bad person is sort of beside the point. Further, having a rationale debate doesn’t have to mean debating whether or not her ideas have merit. It can mean having a debate about the ways that those types of ideas affect hiring practices, teacher student interactions, the self-esteem of minorities, patterns of incarceration, etc. I am sympathetic to the inclination to refuse to entertain discussions about extremely offensive ideas. At the same time, if you don’t, the impact any statement you make can have is necessarily limited to people who are already educated about this stuff and who already agree with you. The issue isn’t that refusing to engage isn’t justifiable; it’s that it’s ineffective.
Additionally, for social justice people who *are* committed to trying to come up with effective ways to address racism-- crucifying everyone who holds racist (or sexist or homophobic) beliefs is a step backwards for a social justice movement. Lots of racial minorities are homophobic. Lots of poor people are racists. Lots of immigrant communities are extremely sexist. As social justice people, we can’t expect to serve the communities that have the most need if we are unwilling to deal with people who have beliefs that we find appalling. Responding to racist ideas by seeking to get the people who hold them removed from their jobs is not a coherent roadmap to get to justice or equality.
Lastly, (and this is in response to a comment I read about your post on FB) maybe a Harvard student’s ignorant email is the face of racism to privileged upper-class intellectuals. But for most people the face of racism is homelessness, mass incarceration, segregated housing and schooling, police brutality, under representation in positions of power in every sector of society and poverty. I get being angry with Grace. I do. She sucks. I just think focusing on her as anything other than a jumping off point to start a broader discussion about what the causes and effects of her brand of racism are is a misdirected and inefficient use of energy.
Wow, thanks Kaitlin. Lots there.
1) I actually debated whether to include that line in the quoted text, but decided that despite the sexism, the commonsense-ness he was trying to convey was a large part of his point. But yes, I agree with you completely
2) Yeah, I've been trying to move the discussion (here, and on reddit and FB) more toward what this says about law school and legal culture rather than her herself (hence the post title's change). I do feel she's just a symptom, and is likely lost, but that doesn't mean we should ignore her either. I just wrote on FB: "I'm struggling with the latter point too - whether to join the chorus of people trying to remove her from her clerkship. Typically, I wouldn't go there, but two things keep coming to mind: 1) we can't have someone with those views writing 9th Cir. opinions, and those opinions are far more important than one 3Ls job, and 2) if we can't reach people and convince them not to be racist, the only thing we can do for society is keep them out of power."
Your point about reaching out to convince people rather than crucifying them is generally good, but if they cannot be reached, then there's no point. And there's racism and then there's being mistaken, like some of the white kids here that think colorblindness is great b/c they've never really thought about it. Those people will be a lot more help than the out and out racists.
And as usual, your point about class is great and something we need to consider always. Though I think it's dually important to understand what racism looks like in the halls of the academy and judge's chamber as well as on the ground and in the prisons, and this episode is instructive, if only of the former.
Hi Kaitlin, thanks for the thoughtful note. A quick point, which may come off as pedantry but is important nonetheless. You said:
"As far as whether publicly defaming Grace is the right answer ..."
That's a bit of a strawman, as I haven't heard anyone credible (and certainly no one on this blog) recommend defaming her. There's a difference between defamation and simply commenting on and republishing comments a person has already acknowledged they made. We're doing the latter.
"That's interesting, except that the article has factual inaccuracies and systemic bias problems, according to wikipedia."
If, as it sounds, the article has factual inaccuracies, I encourage you to correct them. Wikipedia has high visibility, and any misinformation there will be far more widely disseminated than the comments here.
"And I can tell you that any article based on IQ for this tests makes no sense anyway, given environmental influences."
So all intelligence tests are substantially correlated with each other. This correlation is usually called the general intelligence factor. This has been studied substantially and it has both environmental and inheritable components. Whether make it is measuring is "intelligence" is of course more debatable:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_intelligence_factor
"given race is a social construct"
While race has an enormous social component, it certainly correlates to plenty of inheritable traits. Beyond obvious physical differences, there are things like lactose intolerance, or Tay-Sachs. Of course these are still far more concrete and narrow than something like intelligence.
Also, there *is* something to be gained from pointing out people who make comments like these. There are plenty of people out there who literally don't think racism exists. And there are even more people who honestly think that only crazy old guys with burning crosses and white hoods hold racist beliefs (which, prima facie, being "unconvinced" that my race isn't genetically inferior to hers, is).
The closest analogy — not a comparison, but an analogy — that comes to mind is the recent Jihad Jane episode where lots of people were disabused of their notion that only dark skinned "foreigners" are capable of terrorism. There was real value in focusing on the personal aspects of that suspect.
Similarly, if even one person has the epiphany that even a seemingly wholesome, Ivy league, sociology degree holding young lawyer in 2010 can be capable of leaning toward white supremacy (again, prima facie, she does), then it was very much worth spending time highlighting Stephanie Grace.
One more comment while I'm thinking about it.
I'd imagine that one of the most traumatic things to come out of this event for Stephanie Grace will be all of the white supremacists who are likely to reach out to her and stand in solidarity. If she didn't realize the racist slant of her beliefs before, she'll certainly realize it now, if and when she becomes Stormfront's new poster girl.
I think this incident underscores the need for law school to move away from their archaic Socratic and "reasoning" methods of teaching, and towards interdisciplinary methods of teaching that incorporate important subjects like say history and sociology.
The fact also remains that Ms. Grace isn't merely a product of law school culture, but also a product of a privileged white background and K-12 schooling at the "best schools" in America. Schools were lessons about the legacies of U.S. history such as the long-term subjugation and degradation of African-Americans, the systematic racist policies of denying them quality education (through the Supreme Court-sanctioned notion of "separate but equal") and the social stigmatization and stereotyping of blacks as racially inferior in every way including intelligence went unacknowledged.
I guess the question remains, is a person without even a basic understanding of the history of the U.S. and its racial legacies competent to clerk in any court?
Pius, while I get where you are coming from, I have to disagree that there is a value in focusing on Grace as anything other than an example of what is very typical behavior.
I have yet to meet anyone who thinks racism doesn't exist (even if they think its rare). I have met lots of people who conceptualize of racism as a problem made up of individual racists, rather than as systemic problem. If clamoring to get Grace's clerkship removed, organizing BLSA groups to take a harder line against her email and tearing her apart in the media is successful--and thus far, at least in part, it appears to be, all those people will leave saying the problem has been fixed. That we don't need to do anything else because Grace was the bad seed and she has been dealt with. The problem being, that grace isn't an outlier. In a lot of communities racist beliefs are the norm. Treating Grace like an outlier removes any possibility of discussing her brand of racism as systemic and pervasive.
Additionally, the argument that most of the public believes that people who go to ivy league schools aren't racists, and that this will show them that they are wrong just doesn't hold water for me. Maybe ivy educated people who aren't racist think that other ivy educated people aren't racists. But I don't think people outside the ivys conceive of there being a correlation between where someone got their degree and their level of racism. As someone who didn't go to a first, second or third tier ivy I can honestly say it never occurred to me that people who went to ivys would be less bigoted by virtue of their going to a prestigious school. I don't think that this story got picked up because its shocking that a Harvard student is a racist, I think it got picked up because wealthy well educated people would rather discuss other wealthy well educated people than the homeless black guy on the corner. Its sexier. Other Harvard grads will buy newspapers and read the blogs and have academic discussions about Grace ad nauseam. And again, this gives the impression that Grace is an outlier rather than the norm and shuts down any discussion about racism as constantly operating. Essentially I don't think that the tenor of the discussion surrounding Grace has educated the public about the existence of racism, or what racism looks like. Because as I argued in my previous comment, a private email with a racist sentiment is not what is oppressing black people looks like. The culture of racism that informed the ideas in the email and results in disproportionate minority incarceration, poverty, segregated schooling and housing, under representation in positions of power, etc. are.
But even if I'm wrong, and people are shocked to find out that someone with Grace's background is racist, I still don't see the benefit of hoping that "one person has the epiphany that even a seemingly wholesome, Ivy league, sociology degree holding young lawyer in 2010 can be capable of leaning toward white supremacy..." What is the net good for victims of racial oppression of spreading the knowledge that ivy league lawyers are racists too?
Lastly, my fear is that what will happen is that Grace will become a martyr. Rather than despise her, people will feel sorry for her. She will be the poor girl who got drug through the media mud by the mean liberals. All that does is give people who don't have strong feelings about racial equality and might be reached out to, a reason to see us as unreasonable. And once we are a mean unreasonable group no one will want to talk to us or give us the power to make broad systemic changes.
I have conflicted thoughts on episodes like these, which I will get to in a second. But first, I will assure you that there are plenty of people out there who claim racism no longer exists. As someone who's done a lot of research on racial attitudes, I know as fact that there are plenty of people who make this ridiculous claim and the equally ridiculous claim that people of color (or women) don't face any disadvantages. And beyond my own primary research, these people show up in basically any survey of racial attitudes as more than the crazy and small x% you can get to agree with anything.
What I'm conflicted about is the issue you hint at: the lack of appreciating racial discrimination and disadvantage perpetuated by systems and structures. I do believe it's true that episodes like these distract people from thinking about race in this way and reinforce the racism-as-bad-actor(s) idea, which is unfortunate because while interpersonal racism certainly is real, the overwhelming majority of harm committed to people of color is through racist systems and structures, not racist individuals. However, I do usually come down on the side of punishing the people involved in these episodes for a few reasons.
1 - It is an opportunity to point out the still-real problem of interpersonal racism, of which this is a perfectly clear example. If done right, the conversation can lead into one of systems and structures. This example, in particular, fits the bill for that since she was referring to education, a horrendously-discriminatory system.
2 - She's still done wrong, in my opinion, and people who do wrong generally need to be punished. The extent of the harm she's done is impossible to measure, as it's so subjective in nature and by now so widespread. What the appropriate punishment should be is not something I know I'm qualified to identify, but it is terrifying to think that this kind of person would be in a position of some considerable power and influence. Through punishment, we are also implicitly saying "we don't want someone of this stature to have these antiquated, offensive views."
All good points, Kaitlin, but I'm left with one big question. Given that we will all talk about this because she's at Harvard, why not use it to start a conversation about the systemic racism? If not, how will we change it at all, given we have to start by demonstrating it exists (in academia particularly, not just police forces, etc.)?
To be clearer, you seem to agree that we should be using her as an illustration of the systemic failures that people don't believe exist, but you want to do so without vilifying her. And I'm just not sure what that looks like, if it's not what Jill wrote at Feministe (the second link I included). Or even the (admittedly edited a few days ago) title of this post.
I also do think there are a lot of people out there that equate Harvard with good education and racism with bad education. So the fact that even well-educated people are racist is actually a huge factor to point out that liberal/white-dominated private education doesn't solve racism in its current form. And that argument looks separate from the other illustrations of racism out there.
Basically, I guess I believe that looking at racism in academia is separate from other walks of life specifically because of the class issues you point to) and both are important to show. This one is certainly more hidden than say, racial profiling, at least to one not attuned to look for it, which is a good part of our ruling class. And so if we're going to point it out, to not vilify her seems to be at most just a matter of degree, if not what some in the conversation are trying to do now.
One question for you, Kaitlin...are you a person of color? I ask because I am a person of color and I have been told by several people (point-blank, no innuendo, to my face) that racism no longer exists.
Further, I think the only people to feel sorry for Grace will be other equally-prejudiced people who have managed to better hide their racism. I agree that Grace might serve as an example for those people to get even better at being covert about their racism, but that is a chance we have to take.
I think we should talk about Grace because she is at Harvard,and in general, at an Ivy League school. Not because it is "sexier" as you imply, but because she is in a position of power...how many of our past presidents and Supreme Court Justices have come from Ivy League schools? The fact remains that your average person on the street (yes, even the homeless guy) can spout theories of racial superiority but their opinions will have little impact on mine or your life, Kaitlin. Grace's opinions, beliefs and views, as an Ivy League educated lawyer, soon to be Appeals court judicial clerk, very eligible (later in life) for the Supreme Court DOES MATTER, tremendously, and CAN have an impact on my life. This is why I care. And this is why we should continue to talk about her and the systems that created people like her.
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