I’ll let you in on a little secret: The toughest part about law school isn’t getting through it but getting in.

Any reasonably intelligent educated person who is willing to put up with three years of b.s. from professors, thousands of pages of boring reading, and gunner classmates in law school then study enough to pass a bar exam can make a perfectly fine attorney.

Heck, look at me. If I could do it so could most of you.

It ain’t brain surgery or even as one recent radio show caller called it, “rocket surgery.”

But on the day set aside to celebrate the accomplishments of Martin Luther King for a more just society, none other than the Right Wing Wall Street Journal notes a disturbing trend in our law schools—fewer minority applicants are getting in.

An excerpt from their Law Blog Newsletter that I receive:

Study Shows Grim Outlook for Minority Law-School Enrollment

Law-school enrollment of African-Americans and Mexican-Americans has fallen by 8.6% in the past 15 years, according to a Web site created by Columbia Law and the Society of American Law Teachers. And with anti-affirmative action admissions measures gaining traction around the country, the numbers could get worse, according to an NLJ story.

The decline has come as applications to law schools among those minority groups have remained constant and law school enrollment overall has risen since 1992.

Let me be frank about this.  Does South Dakota or the United States need still more middle class, white, male attorneys like me? No.  Do we need more attorneys who come from the minority and disabled communities?  Yes.

Why do I say this?

Who is more likely to return to their community and work for justice?  Some Indian kid who grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation or some white boy like me?  Who is more likely to return to the Third Ward in Houston?  Some black kid who grew up in public housing or White Bread Todd? 

I think we all know the answers to those questions.

Even in the early days of the civil rights movement, it was the few black lawyers like Thurgood Marshall and my fellow Washburn Law alums like Charles Scott who took on Brown v. Topeka Board of Education. 

And again,frankly, most of the white students look at law school as a means to an economic end. Even here in South Dakota, most end up working for corporations or large law firms and become the tools of the capitalist class.

And, there’s nothing wrong with that.

But if you want lawyers who understand the struggle for civil and human rights, you’re more likely to get that from the Mexican kid from S.Sioux City, NE who got followed around in a store because the clerk thought they would steal something versus the rich white kid from across the river in Dakota Dunes whose biggest problem was deciding what video game to buy at Best Buy.

My law school experiences were greatly  enhanced at my law school alma maters—Washburn and Houston—because of my interactions with Native American, Black, Hispanic, LGBT, and other minority students.  I came to understand their concerns and perspectives.  They were a breath of fresh air from most of my overly competitive white colleagues.

For the civil rights movement to advance and for those who have not always shared in the American dream to get their chance, we need to make sure there are spots for those smart kids with lower LSATs who will make perfectly good—even great—attorneys.

Then, someday, can the full effect of Dr. King’s dream be realized.

Apparently anti-semitism is alive and well in Rapid City.

In a remarkable interview in the Rapid City Weekly, Rapid City businessman and developer and political bagman Doug Hamilton calls former State Senator Stan Adelstein as “the head Jew in town.”

Excuse me?

Here’s the quote:

He (Hamilton) said he doesn’t dislike (Stan) Adelstein, although that feeling may not be shared. “Oh no,” he said. “Stan hates me. I consider him a friend. My wife’s Jewish and Stan is the head Jew in town.”

This is the sort of language you might have heard expressed about a Jewish person in the 1930s.  “Head Jew” connotates the typical stereotypes that Jews run everything, are good at business, and are bossy.

Wow. 

Doug, when does the pogrom begin in Rapid? 

Yahoo reports an interesting case where a judge in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia held that U.S. money is discriminatory against citizens who are blind.

• Judge: make bills recognizable to blind--Money – The government discriminates against blind people by printing money that all looks and feels the same, a federal judge said Tuesday in a ruling that could change the face of American currency.  Read: (Source)

An excerpt:

"Of the more than 180 countries that issue paper currency, only the United States prints bills that are identical in size and color in all their denominations," [Judge  James] Robertson wrote. "More than 100 of the other issuers vary their bills in size according to denomination, and every other issuer includes at least some features that help the visually impaired."

Government attorneys argued that forcing the Treasury Department to change the size of the bills or add texture would make it harder to prevent counterfeiting. Robertson was not swayed.

I've never really thought about this but it does make sense.  What if you had to rely on touch only to determine how much money you had in your wallet to buy something at the store?

Many years ago when I was a cub reporter for KTWU-TV (PBS) in Topeka, KS, I covered the Kansas Legislature.  At one of the snack bars in the Capitol, one of the clerks was blind.  While he could tell the coins apart, everyone who had spent any time in the Capitol would tell him what bill they were paying with.  He then had a system of placing the bills in his tray for making change.  His system depended on honesty and I never saw any problems.  But still. . .

We'll see if the government appeals.