I’m confident that Daily Post contributor Gary Beatty enjoys a good argument, because I’ve often crossed email swords with him regarding his past submissions — nearly all of which we’ve ultimately (and happily) shared here in the Daily Post.
A collection of Mr. Beatty’s submissions can be found here.
A select few submissions didn’t make the cut.
We can also note that Mr. Beatty has had a long and reportedly successful career as a member of the legal profession, a profession for whom ‘argument’ is the primary stock in trade. His most recent submission, which we shared yesterday, was titled “A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW: The Idiocy of Diversity”.
Mr. Beatty has been relentless in warning us that America is headed into a Socialist/Marxist hell, if we continue to allow leftist politicians — and in particular, the Democratic Party — to serve as our leaders, and especially, if we allow them to control American education. Especially, so-called Higher Education.
In ‘The Idiocy of Diversity’ he bemoans a recent vote, by the American Bar Association (ABA), to cease endorsing the LSAT as a requirement to enter law school.
The Law School Admission Test is a standardized test administered by the Law School Admission Council, designed to assess reading comprehension as well as logical and verbal reasoning proficiency. Last month, the accrediting council for the ABA voted 15-1 to no longer require the administering of the LSAT for law school applications. Starting in 2025, the ABA will no longer mandate that law schools require a ‘valid and reliable admission test’ as a part of its application process — after feedback from a public comment period suggested that dropping the testing requirement would increase diversity.
Law schools may still require the test as a part of its admissions process, if they wish, but the LSAT will no longer be required for ABA accreditation.
Mr. Beatty jumps to the conclusion — as do numerous right-wing news-and-opinion websites — that the ABA is prioritizing ‘diversity’ over reading comprehension and verbal reasoning, and he suggests that this decision illustrates the “bigotry of low expectations”.
He may have borrowed the phrase “bigotry of low expectations” from a recent op-ed written by RedState.com contributor Mike Miller.
From that November 19 article:
The American Bar Association (ABA), the national voice of the legal profession, which prides itself on “serving the public and the profession by promoting justice, professional excellence, and respect for the law,” will no longer require the administering of the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) for law school applications, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. I can solve this oxymoronic problem in six words:
The soft bigotry of low expectations.
The phrase “the soft bigotry of low expectations” was coined in 2000 by President George W. Bush (courtesy of his speechwriter, Michael Gerson) in a speech to the NAACP that marked the launching of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, which had broad bi-partisan support in Congress. Many commentators have since classified No Child Left Behind as an educational failure.
Like Mr. Beatty, I’m concerned about American education. I’m concerned about the American Bar Association. I’m concerned about racism.
So here’s a slightly different point of view, on lawyers, the ABA, and the LSAT.
Considering that the LSAT test was first developed in 1948, we might assume that nearly all current members of the American Bar Association took the LSAT test to get into law school. How did that work out?
Recently, the Gallup organization asked Americans which professionals they trust most, and least. Nurses (who, we will note, do not have to take the LSAT test) came out with a very high approval rating. Teachers did well, as did police.
Journalists appeared in the middle of the pack, with both high and low ratings.
Fewer than 1-in-5 Americans expressed “Very high or High” opinions of Lawyers. Is the ABA concerned about that?
Mr. Beatty and numerous right-wing commentators point to the LSAT test as a valuable in selecting candidates for law schools. It seems to me, a much better test would assess the honesty and ethical standards of those candidates.
But of course, this whole argument might indeed be about low expectations.
According to the ABA 2020 Profile of the Legal Profession, the percentage of lawyers who are men and women of color – Hispanic, African American, Asian, Native American and mixed race – grew slowly over the past decade, but people of color are still underrepresented in the legal profession compared with their presence in the U.S. population.
For example, 5% of all lawyers are African American – the same percentage as 10 years ago – but the U.S. population is 13.4% African American. Similarly, 5% of all lawyers are Hispanic – up from 4% a decade earlier – although the U.S. population is 18.5% Hispanic. And 2% of all lawyers are Asian – up slightly from 1.6% 10 years earlier – while the U.S. population is 5.9% Asian.
Women, who constitute slightly more than 50% of the American population, make up about a third of the county’s lawyers, but they are largely excluded from the higher levels of the legal profession, accounting for only 17 percent of equity partners. In ABA research, about 60% of women lawyers felt excluded from the formal and informal networking opportunities often crucial to building client and collegial relationships essential to advancement. Only 4 percent of white male lawyers felt the same way.
It seems that the ABA has concerns about the diversity of its profession.
Instead of embracing the status quo, as certain right-wing commentators seem eager to do — by extolling a requirement to pass the LSAT, for example — the ABA appears to be looking at different ways to improve access for a significant population of law school candidates.
Will the ABA be successful? Only time will tell.
But I always appreciate folks who are willing to see things from a different point of view.
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.