SISTER LAW PROFESSOR
I’m sure more than one colleague thinks my recent foray into law school was an intellectual’s version of a mid-life crisis. I mean think about it. For the money I borrowed I could have gotten a BMW X3, a tummy tuck plus a week in Cabo with a Shemar Moore look-a like. And I still would have had 50K to spare. But instead, I took the more conventional route and added more letters behind my name.
On graduation day, I seriously wondered if I would have been better off with the tummy tuck.
Successfully navigating law school was nothing compared to trying to sit quietly during the commencement speech, which was anti-climatic to say the least. Our speaker waxed on at length about To Kill a Mockingbird and Atticus Finch as the epitome of the kind of lawyer we should all aspire to be.
This is exactly the kind of tired, mid-twentieth century white liberalism that still permeates the study and practice of law, a view that has not done much to address the great inequality faced by people of color today in our judicial system.
Sure, Gregory Peck gave a great performance, but with all due respect to the fans, the book was published exactly fifty years before our class enrolled in law school. Fifty years. Why are law professors still looking to a book written fifty years ago for a model of racial equality that will work today? Does Microsoft do that? Is Bill Gates planning a new release of Windows that only works with floppy disks and dial up internet?
A little insight into the contemporary discussion regarding this book is not all that difficult (you don’t even need to ask a librarian or use a micro-fiche to find it). There’s Malcolm Gladwell’s, thoughtful piece in The New Yorker that argues that the “[b]ook that we thought instructed us about the world tells us, instead, about the limitations of Jim Crow liberalism in Maycomb, Alabama.”
If The New Yorker is a little too mainstream for you, in 1992, Monroe Freedman, a legal ethics expert published two articles in the national legal newspaper Legal Times calling for the legal profession to set aside Atticus Finch as a role model.
Freedman argued that Atticus still worked within a system of institutionalized racism and sexism and should not be revered. Critics of Atticus such as Freedman maintain that Atticus Finch is morally ambiguous and does not use his legal skills to challenge the racist status quo in Maycomb.
Take Calpurnia, Atticus’ Black maid who is portrayed as loving nothing more than raising his children and keeping his house clean. How many of you think it’d be fine with Atticus if Scout married one of Calpurnia’s own children? My point exactly.
None of this was mentioned in our commencement speech. Instead, the speaker gave a high school plot analysis that frequently used the word “Negro,” and explained that one of her friends entered the profession because of Atticus Finch. This is not the first time I’ve heard this. But as of 2010, African Americans made up 12.6% of the U.S. population, and in 2009 made up 39.4% of the prison population. Apparently the adoration of Atticus Finch hasn’t put a dent in the way racial inequality still plays out in our legal system.
I walked across the stage to get my diploma hoping that my kids wouldn’t ask me at dinner what a “Negro” was, and I reflected that I had earned a degree that assumes that law is racially neutral.
Six weeks later, after returning to a life that didn’t require studying for multiple-choice exams, I received the following e-mail: “I am pleased to invite you to teach the ‘Race and Law Seminar’ during the 2011 summer session. (Blah, blah, blah…Blah, blah, blah.) We welcome you to our adjunct faculty.”
That has to be a record—six weeks. So in May, I returned to law school to sit on the other side of the desk with the hopes of challenging my former classmates’ world-view.
During our first class we explored how we had been taught law. We learned about Langdell’s “case-dialogue” method and the school of thought that coincides with it: Formalism. We then examined the Legal Realists who posed the first critique of Formalism, followed by the Critical Legal Studies Scholars. We covered this background so that they could understand how, when, and why Critical Race Theory entered the Academy.
On the second day of class we viewed the documentary, Race – The Power of An Illusion: Episode Three: The House We Live In. After that we discussed the concept of “Whiteness.”
And here’s where the law profession idealization a la Atticus Finch always hit the proverbial brick wall—I’m continually astounded that this notion is so contentious. Why don’t people understand that this is a legal category from the Articles of Confederation that defined citizenship? Don’t look at me, it wasn’t my idea.
We then spent the following six weeks reading critical race theory, and as their final written assignment I had them write a ten page critical analysis of Beyond All Reason: The Radical Assault on Truth in American Law. It was with this text that we came full circle; the authors Farber and Sherry, both long-standing liberals, argue that “radical multiculturalism” gives liberalism a bad name. They claim that race theorists embrace a system of thought that admits no objective reality, no truth, and no hope of a just or equal society.
On the final day of class I left the students with this question—is critiquing a post-racial or color-blind America in 2011 really “beyond all reason?”
The students were too indoctrinated to “look behind the mirror” to see their whiteness, but they thanked me for being “fair.” Despite their resistance to critical thinking, I still left the course with a sense of satisfaction. It wasn’t quite a trip to Cabo, but I had somehow healed my racial trauma from law school.
And I finally felt that after four years, I had transitioned from sister law student to sister law professor. Mid-life really couldn’t feel better.
LoloReads
232 days ago
I think that your critique of Professor Christina Kunz’s comments to your graduating class is a bit harsh, but understandably so. Apparently, you neglected to take Professor Kunz’s first-year course entitled “Gems of Classic American Films and The Law,” a survey course that examines the wisdom of Hollywood films from the 1930s to the 1960s as related to both the law and the law school experience.
Here are some of the film excerpts from the course syllabus:
ON THE LEGAL PROFESSION:
“The Caine Mutiny,” Lt. Keefer: 99 percent of everything we do is strict routine. Only one percent requires creative intelligence.
ON THE LAW SCHOOL EXPERIENCE:
“The Wizard of Oz,” Cowardly Lion: Look at the circles under my eyes. I haven't slept in weeks! Tin Woodsman: Why don't you try counting sheep? Cowardly Lion: That doesn't do any good, I'm afraid of 'em. [sobs loud] Scarecrow: Aw, that's too bad.
REAL PROPERTY
“Gone With the Wind,” Gerald O'Hara: Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin' for, worth fightin' for, worth dyin' for, because it's the only thing that lasts.
POVERTY LAW
“The Ten Commandments,” Charlton Heston as Moses: And there shall be so great a cry throughout the land, that you will surely let the people go.
FEMINIST JURISPRUDENCE
“Some Like it Hot,” Jack Lemmon as Jerry: Look at that! Look how she moves! That’s just like Jell-O on springs. She must have some sort of built-in motor. I… I tell you, it’s a whole different sex!
CONTRACTS
“A Night At The Opera,” Groucho Marx as Otis B. Driftwood: It’s all right, that’s in every contract. That’s what they call a sanity clause.
RACE AND THE LAW
“The Jerk,” Steve Martin as Navin: I was born a poor black child.
CIVIL PROCEDURE
“The King and I,” Yul Brynner as King: Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
CONFLICT OF LAWS
“Cool Hand Luke,” Strother Martin as Captain: What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.
CRIMINAL LAW
“The Diary of Anne Frank,” Millie Perkins as Anne Frank: I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are really good at heart.
Anonymous
231 days ago
Great post cousin! I have been confronting the limits of white liberalism quite personally recently, having joined two advisory boards that are majority white. In some ways, perhaps many ways, some white liberals are as cemented into their ideas about black people as bigots, they just have different stereotypes they cling to.
LoloReads
230 days ago
From Anonymous: "In some ways, perhaps many ways, some white liberals are as cemented into their ideas about black people as bigots, they just have different stereotypes they cling to."
You hit the nail on the head. The "white liberalism" you speak of serves to maintain systemic status quo, while absolving individual white people of implication in structural racial injustice. Unexamined "white goodness" is the pathological core of this type of white liberalism. Even as I write, I am mindful of the ongoing praxis of freedom from this dynamic–continual reflection, action, more reflection, more action…
Anonymous
225 days ago
Duch–thanks for your powerful insight. Also, isn't it interesting that we were assigned To Kill A Mockingbird in our Professional Responsibility class? Atticus' moral ambiguity and antiquated perspective was a poor choice for that course. In any event, congrats on finishing your class!
WJ Moussa Foster
225 days ago
Professor and Friend, let me applaud the courage you demonstrate in addressing the pitfalls of liberalism. They are part of the privilege White liberals enjoy and use, intentionally or inadvertently, to deflect fair and intelligent criticism of their position. I would recommend Dr. Matthew Johnson's recent work, The Tragic Vision of African American Religion, as a visionary approach to the psychology that under girds White liberal resistance to model other their own of social justice. How ironic that the group of people who invented race, exploited the world through racialized colonization and slavery and who owe their current social status to structural, systemic racial affirmative action for White people can now announce the Race is Just an Illusion? BTW this was not the meaning of the series. It attempts to say that the exclusionary power derived from White pseudo-scientific interpretations of race are patently false.