a woeful tale of group exclusion

Early this past summer I took the LSAT—not, I hasten to add, because I intend on going to law school, but because a high enough score would have made me eligible to teach lawyer wannabes at one of the various test prep academies. I stumbled a bit on the first section, and so didn't score as high as I had hoped. Nonetheless my result was respectable enough to merit the attention of recruiters. And so my mailbox runneth over.

Of course, there is reason to suspect that it isn't so much my potential as a future legal eagle that has made me a desirable commodity; it's the first part of my surname. That suspicion is only reinforced by the letter I received this week from a student organization at the Columbia University Law School, printed on official letterhead.

The name of said organization is the Latina/o Law Students Association. I kid you not: the "/" is part of the name. Mustn't have any sexism in our ethnically exclusivist advocacy group, now can we?

Orrin Judd often claims that all humor is conservative. In this instance, at least, I'm inclined to agree: those who don't find that organization name completely ridiculous have likely been assimilated into the groupthink that defines personal identity not so much by one's unique characteristics as by membership in groups demarcated by race, class, and sexual preference.

When pushed to its logical conclusion—something its proponents are never willing to do, especially as they won't state their axioms as starkly as I just did—the inherent contradictions are obvious. Take me, for instance: the son of a Puerto Rican career Army noncom, I'm too tall and too white to be seen as truly Latino, and too short and too brunet to be truly accepted amongst the Scandinavians from which (most of) the rest of my mongrel heritage derives.

Whatever shall I do?

Of course, even a humor-disabled multiculti would suspect something awry in my dilemma, as Norwegian-Americans by definition cannot meet the standards of a legitimate minority. They're white European, for pity's sake. What is not so humorous is that organizations such as LaLSA will through their alumni have greater influence than mere numbers might suggest.