The Diversity Corner
| Publication year | 2021 |
| Pages | 47 |
| Citation | Vol. 90 No. 1 Pg. 47 |
January, 2021.
A Brief Survey of Diversity in the Western Kansas Bar: Where Are We and Where Do We Go from Here?
by Etta L. Walker, J.
When asked to write a column about diversity or racism in rural or Western Kansas, I thought I was ill-suited for the assignment. I am a white female lawyer in the second-least populated county in Kansas, which is approximately 90 percent white and in which 93.22 percent of voters voted for the Republican ticket in the 2020 election, up from 91 percent in 2016. Lawyers surely are by definition privileged and white lawyers more so. In the profound wake of the renewed civil rights movement, prompted by the eight and a half minutes of a cop's knee on the neck of George Floyd, what can be written that does not pale in comparison to the more pressing issues in our culture?
What I can do is provide a look at some of the facts, which may prompt at least some awareness and begin a new exploration of diversity and bias in our communities. My review raises more questions than it answers.
Our Population and Representativeness
I live on the border of far Northwest Kansas-where the population is predominantly white, less than 10 percent Hispanic and less than 5 percent black-and Southwest Kansas, where three counties are majority Hispanic and eleven other counties range from 16 percent to 48 percent Hispanic.
I began by looking for Western Kansas county population statistics on commonly accepted categories of diversity such as religion, national origin, race, color, sex, and disability. Those figures are difficult to find, both for the general population by county and for the bar. The Kansas Attorney Registration office does not collect this information, although I hope it will begin doing so, and the ABA has estimates for the state, but apparently not for individual counties.
Kansas has nearly equal numbers of males and females,[1] and in my quick search I did not find the percentage of the population identifying as other genders. Approximately 9 percent of Kansans have permanent disabilities.[2] For other diversity, Kansas has:[3]
-
Hispanic or Latino 12.2%
12.2%
Black/African American alone 6.1%
6.1%
American Indian/Alaska Native alone 1.2%
1.2%
Asian alone 3.2%
3.2%
Pacific Islander/Native Hawaiian alone .01%
.01%
Two or more races 3.1%
3.1%
White alone, not Hispanic or Latino 75.4%
75.4%
The composition of undergraduates enrolled at Fort Hays State University, which is the only four year public university in the western part of Kansas and may be a feeder institution for lawyers for the west, is fairly close to the state averages, according to the Common Data Set for 2018—2019 for FHSU.
Many counties in Western Kansas have significant numbers of Hispanic or Latino residents and three have more than 50 percent Hispanic/Latino populations.[4]
-
Seward
62.0%
Ford
55.6%
Finney
50.5%
Grant
47.9%
Stanton
37.7%
Stevens
36.8%
Hamilton
36.0%
Kearny
32.3%
Haskell
31.4%
Wichita
29.9%
Morton
23.4%
Greeley
19.9%
Scott
18.5%
Gray
1 6.4%
Yet through my informal survey and review, I found no Hispanic district judge and only one Hispanic district magistrate judge in Western Kansas, and located only a few Hispanic attorneys and four other attorneys who are persons of color or other non-Anglo ethnicity. [5]
In Southwest Kansas, Ford County-home of Dodge City-has 39 attorneys, per the Blue Book. Four (almost 10 percent) are Hispanic and 12 (30 percent) are women, according to my inquiries. Finney County, home of Garden City, has three attorneys who are Hispanic (five percent) and 16 women (28 percent) out of the 57 total attorneys. Seward County has 29 attorneys, seven of whom are women, and one Latinx/Hispanic attorney.[6]
-
County
Population
% Hispanic
# Lawyers
Women
Lawyers
Hispanic
Lawyers
Ford
33,619
55.6
39
12 (30%)
4 (10%)
Finney
36,467
50.5
57
16 (28%)
3 (5%)
Seward
21,428
62.0%
29
7 (24%)
0
The seven counties that make up the Northwest Kansas 15th Judicial District are very different from Finney and Ford Counties demographically. The entire 15th district has 29 practicing resident lawyers, 28 percent of whom are women (8) and 3 percent black (1), none Hispanic.
Western Kansas counties have fairly close to equal populations of men and...
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