BlaCKs* do poorly on the bar exam, so, naturally, progs want to abolish it

Anna (Shelley Long):
“That is such a dumb idea. Sometimes it amazes me you ever passed the bar.”

Walter (Tom Hanks):
“I’m not surprised. You’ve never passed a bar in your life.”

THE MONEY PIT

Washington State is planning to join Oregon in banning the bar exam. That’s the two-day or three-day test taken by recent law school graduates (and, in the case of the Kennedys, not-so-recent law school graduates) to prove they’re fit to hold a state license to practice law. It tests the student’s knowledge of the rules of law as learned in law school (or, more likely, in studying for the bar exam, since hardly anything useful is learned in law school) and their skill at applying that knowledge to hypothetical scenarios.

The bar-banners are candid about the reasons for their ban. It’s because BLacks* disproportionately fail to pass the exam as compared to whites and even as compared to other minorities (including minorities from homes where the language spoken at home was not English).

The fact that BLacKs* do poorly on the bar exam proves to the bar-banners that the exam is racist. If you question their conclusion that the exam is racist, that makes you yourself racist. In short, the bar-banners’ rebuttal is along the lines of SHUT UP, YOU RACIST!

You can’t argue with logic.

This is part of a broader move to ban tests of merit for the same reasons. For example, there’s a move to ban college admission tests like the SAT. The thinking is that if BlACks* do poorly on a SAT test, and they generally do, then the test must be racist and should be banned.

Never mind that the SAT is the best available predictor for a student’s academic success in college. As the SAT-banners would say, SHUT UP, YOU RACIST!

Actually, most colleges that have banned the SAT have not actually banned it completely. They’ve instead made it “optional.” This is a clever song and dance where they encourage BlAcKs* not to take the test because the college does not want a record of their score. That record is a smoking gun when they get sued for discriminating in favor of BLAcKs* and against whites in violation of the recent racist Supreme Court decision by white supremacists led by Justice Clarence Thomas opining that people should be judged on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.

Three Justices dissented from that Supreme Court decision, eloquently and persuasively counseling the majority to “SHUT UP, YOU RACIST!”

But most of those colleges still DO encourage whites to take the SAT. Because they want to use it to compare between white applicants. Because it works — it’s a good predicter of academic success in college.

You might ask, how can the test be a good predictor of white success but not BLAcK* success?

SHUT UP, YOU RACIST!

I’m happy to report that three prestige colleges that had previously banned the SAT have now reinstated it for both BLAck* and white applicants. Those colleges are Yale, Brown and Dartmouth. Maybe they’ll start a trend.

Relatedly, Elon Musk recently allowed himself to get into a debate with a moron on this issue of standardized competency tests. Musk suggested that if we lower the standards for getting into and graduating from medical school, people of lower standards will be admitted and graduated. That outcome, Musk suggested, endangers patients.

The moron said Musk was engaging in ridiculous hypotheticals. The moron wanted to know, how on earth lowering the standards for being admitted and graduated from medical school could possibly result in the admission and graduation of people of lower standards?

Musk wisely discontinued the dialog with the moron.

* I capitalize the “B” in “Blacks” because the BlaCk establishment types who say they speak for their race tell me to. They also tell the AP Style Manual to. (I don’t know whether everyday normal Black people who work for a living rather than collecting rents from guilt-plagued upper class white liberals have that same craving for a big “B.” I’m guessing they have better things to worry about than the size of their “B.”)

Anyway, it occurred to me . . . if one capital letter in “BlAck” is a good thing for BlacK* self-esteem, and a step toward reparations for people who’ve been dead two hundred years, imposed on people who were born two hundred years later, etc., then a second or third or fourth capital letter would be even better, right? As in my examples above.

But I hereby warn the BlaCK establishment: I have no intention of using italics or bold font. Unless, of course, you make me feel really guilty and offer a brilliant argument like SHUT UP, YOU RACIST!