Katherine Kersten's Korner

This week's kolumn isn't the feel-good space-filler that she has written of late, breaking her streak. It's also something that I really can't care too much about, that of who belongs to which holier-than-though professional group of some kind or another. It highlights several types of crazy, though, so I'll go through it.

Wingnuttia Level: TA (too apathetic)

It starts with the law firm of Maslon, Edelman, Borman and Brand. It was founded 50 years ago by a Jewish lawyer who couldn't work anywhere else. It was involved with lots of civil rights cases over the years, including desegregating Minneapolis schools. It is headed by a woman. All good.

In 1997 the firm decided to represent some white students who thought that they were denied admission to the law school because of their race. It was a pretty controversial case.

As aside: if I remember this case (and there's no guarantee that I do), the case revolved around the argument that the scores and G.P.A.s the white students had would have been good enough to get them into the school had they not been white, since the standards for non-whites are lower. I detest this kind of affirmative action. Saying that a score of 150 on the LSAT is an automatic rejection if a white student receives it but can lead to admission if a non-white student receives it goes completely against any notion of objective standards. If you want to do that, then get rid of objective measures like grades and tests and go with totally subjective means of determining fitness. I support the kind of affirmative action where objective standards aren't lowered for anybody, where if everything else is more or less equal you take the person with the more diverse background. That's good in my opinion.

Anyway, in 2006 the Maslon firm applied to Twin Cities Diversity in Practice, "a consortium of nine major corporations and 19 law firms interested in recruiting and hiring minority attorneys." They were not admitted because the Minnesota Association of Black Lawyers thought that Maslon's representation of these white students was unacceptable and "carries an unacceptable 'taint' that is likely to undermine ... the goal of attracting future attorneys of color."

Well, this seems pretty silly to me. Lawyers are lawyers: they get paid by their clients to do what their clients tell them to do. Everybody is entitled to legal representation. Malson did what they did for the same reason that Wal-Mart pressures its suppliers to reduce their costs constantly. And yes, people find fault with both things. That doesn't make it any less silly when you get right down to it.

The Minnesota Association of Black Lawyers, however, is not helping its cause by holding minority-only parties on public property. I agree that any group of professionals, be it lawyers, doctors, plumbers, truck drivers, or underwater basket weavers, that hold a racially-segregated meeting in the year 2006 is completely disgusting. It boggles the mind that a group of people can decry representing white students in a discrimination case one minute and then discriminate against white people the next. Have they no sense of irony?

In the grand scheme of things, though, does this matter? Like I said, whether Maslon belongs to this "Twin Cities Diversity in Practice" isn't going to affect whether Maslon actually hires minorities or whites or anybody else. But it does manage to paint a whole lot of people in a pretty poor light. Inspirational, isn't it?