The “Beauty Shop” women discuss Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony’s divorce announcement, the criticism Michelle Obama received for eating a 1,700-calorie meal, and the merits of using an alleged rape victim’s name in mainstream media. Host Michel Martin speaks with American Studies Associate Professor Duchess Harris, Latina Magazine Editorial Director Galina Espinoza, politics and pop culture blogger Danielle Belton, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Connie Schultz.

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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.

The last time my mom, brother, and sister and I were together for a happy occasion was June 1980 for my sister’s wedding. December of that year, my brother enlisted in the Army and spent the next ten years in Germany.

For the most part, my siblings missed my formative years because I was what you might call a “bonus baby.” When I came along my sister was already 14 ½ and my brother was 12. We were all together in 1985 when my Dad had a heart attack, but those were tense times. We reconvened again in December 2006 when he was dying, and as one might expect, things were said that shouldn’t have been. When he finally passed away in April 2007, we attended the funeral with the families we had made for ourselves, and each of us turned to them for comfort.

It wasn’t until the fall of 2010 when I had a pulmonary embolism that I realized I just wanted one adult memory with my siblings when we weren’t distressed. I saw that there would be a “Black politics” conference an hour from where they lived, and grabbed the opportunity. I invited my brother, my sister, and our mom to join me for lunch.

Family dynamics have a way of being ingrained, and I had forgotten an old one that was pretty sweet. When we all lived at home I was “the baby.” This meant that I was immune to the rivalry that existed between my siblings and they were both pretty kind to me.

Over the years our relationships changed and the “baby status” had been replaced with, “Who does she think she is?” But I was able to put that aside, maybe because I was in a good place emotionally. I don’t know if it was the embolism, the slow and painful death of a dear friend to cancer, or just the fact that by now we all had bifocals; but we were good to each other on Saturday. We listened to each others’ stories and learned about the life experiences that we hadn’t shared.

My brother brought his daughter, who is now the age I was in 1980. Looking at her reminded me of how we used to be. The visit was only two hours, and when my Mom climbed into the car, she said to me “Bye, Baby.” My sister-in-law giggled, “Baby?!??!.” I laughed and said, it’s like that Helen Reddy song, “She’s 41 and her Momma still calls her baby.” I stood there waiving as they pulled away.

I now have one good adult memory with my family of origin. With my people, you only get that once in a perigee moon.

I am a progressive parent, and two of our three children go to Montessori School. When I went to our daughter’s first grade parent/teacher conference and found out that they were going to be learning about reproductive health, I took it in stride. We were given a copy of How You Were Born by Joanna Cole, who is most famous as the author of The Magic School Bus.

They gave us two weeks to read the book with our child, and then the girls would discuss it at school with the female first grade teacher, and the boys would discuss it with the male first grade teacher. This all seemed reasonable.

When I picked up the book, which Parent’s Magazine dubs, “The best book we’ve seen yet on the subject,” I was slightly confused. I wouldn’t consider myself an expert, but I started figuring out where babies came from when I was still wearing Garanimals.

Now if you factor out assisted reproductive technology, there is a penis somewhere in the conception story.

So I decided that I must have missed the penis in the 48-page book. But on a second and then third reading, I never spotted the organ that I was glad to meet somewhere between the Garanimals stage of life, and the push-up bra phase.

I did some research. According to School Library Journal, the original version of the book came out in 1984. By 1993, “the diagrams of the male and female reproductive systems are left out.”

Yes, those minor, unimportant details.

I have moved from confusion to concern. In 2011 we are sophisticated enough to read this with our child,

“You went from the uterus into the vagina, a special tunnel that connects the uterus to the outside. The vagina can stretch wide to let a baby pass through. First your head appeared. Then your whole body came out;” (p 34)

But the only explanation for how the baby got there is,

“In a man’s body are sperm cells. The sperm cells have long tails and can swim. When a sperm and an egg join together, they form a special cell that can grow into a baby.” (19)

Now when my kids ask where the heck the sperm cells are, where is the illustration for that? Why are we comfortable labeling the uterus and vagina, but not the penis? In 2011 women’s bodies are for display, and men’s bodies aren’t?

Joanna Cole leaves the child confused thinking that women are solely responsible for childbirth, and this message isn’t helpful in a political climate that wants to control women’s bodies.

Their effort to control women’s bodies makes sense to me now. We have The Magical Uterus.

When I started law school all three of my kids were in diapers, and I worked full time the first two years. Despite numerous obstacles, I have walked this long and winding road and reached my goal. I have very few regrets because I know that I did the best that I could with what I had. Law school wasn’t what I expected, but I surprised myself with how many times I got up after being knocked down. I only missed one day of class after my pulmonary embolism, and I returned to law school more determined than ever.

The rigor of Law School enhanced my discipline; and in turn I contributed with an online race and the law journal. In Contracts they call that a bargain for exchange. I am humble enough to realize that I took more than I gave; but I am proud to have launched the first online, interactive scholarly publication dedicated to the complex issues surrounding race and the law. As Ruthie Wilson Gilmore said in her Presidential Address to the American Studies Association, “Infiltrate what exists, innovate what doesn’t.” Immigration law is not on the bar, and I hope my small innovation with this journal will contribute to a re-examination of where our legal system doesn’t provide equal protection under the laws.

I have numerous critiques of the law school curriculum. I think for law school admission, there should be more of a “subject matter” baseline. Engineering Majors struggle with the Constitution more than they should, and Humanities people like me have no business calculating damages in Torts. I think letting certified student attorneys serve clients without direct supervision is dicey. Law Journals might consider blind/peer review.

Finally, I think that the three courses that impacted me the most, Poverty Law, Race and the Law and Feminist Jurisprudence, should join Estates and Trusts, Corporations, and the Uniform Commercial Code as knowledge that is worthy to learn for the bar. After more than three years of training, no one is less surprised than I am that the disciplines which helped corporations be regarded as people are elevated over disciplines that ensure the rights of actual human beings.

Given the choice, would I study law again? Definitely. Why? One of my most difficult law professors told me that I willingly entered the master’s house, knowing that his tools would not destroy it.

I didn’t go to law school to destroy the master’s house. I went to law school to learn the master’s tools, so that I could build my own house. We’ll see how that goes.

Happy Thanksgiving and be thankful; I am!