Law Schools, Racism

Law School Dean Suggests Black People Lack 'Reason' And Other Delightful Post-Ferguson Talk

And just for good measure, an NYU law student composes a "parody" of the situation and it goes about as well as you'd expect.

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Remember when Michael Brown was a thing? Because CNN is talking about Ebola again. I guess that “widespread violence” they secretly hoped to cover didn’t shake out for them and they moved on. But hey, maybe there wasn’t a lot of looting, but there have been a lot of jackhole lawyers making light of a dead unarmed kid! So we’ve got that to be proud of as a profession.

Let’s start with a George Mason Law dean taking to Twitter to say some hilariously racist stuff. But don’t worry NYU, you’ll get your moment in the sun too!

Richard Kelsey is the Assistant Dean for Management and Planning at George Mason Law:

Ugh.

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Look, you might read this and say, “aren’t body-cams a great idea?” And you’re right that grossly stressing state and municipal budgets toward more police spending and giving another boondoggle to TASER instead of actually punishing cops for abuse is “an idea.” But hey that’s not going to happen so, sure, body-cams. This is a great plan and I’m excited to be a part of it.

At least Kelsey’s done a community service for prospective students. One Twitter user replied simply “add another law school to the list of nopes.” Maybe this is all a clever move by Kelsey to cut down on the amount of “Management and Planning” he needs to do next year. If so, I tip my hat to you, sir.

Meanwhile, up at NYU, in the immediate aftermath of the grand jury’s decision, the NYU Law Students for Justice in Palestine sent this statement to Coases, the NYU Law listserv (our version gets cut off at the end, but you get the gist):

Pretty standard statement from a concerned organization. But since this is 2014, it’s also going to be targeted for an off-color attack:

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The post is flagged as a parody though! As Ricky Bobby taught us, so long as you flag it “with all due respect,” everything’s cool. It’s in the Geneva Convention, look it up.

Because when I think apples to apples, I think the killing of an unarmed kid and having to wait out a weather delay in the airport bar. Whitepeopleproblems, amiright?

Look, the parade of different causes posting “me too!” statements of support can get annoying. There’s also a certain newsjacking feel to it — trying to build support for a cause by glomming on to an unrelated hot news story. And I like to think that’s what this poster was trying to skewer. At least there’d be a point then.

Unfortunately, if there’s any group with a salient argument for connecting their case to Michael Brown it would be a group representing a population routinely harassed by a militarized police force. And no, it’s not a defense of Hezbollah to say that the average Palestinian is targeted by unwarranted police action any more than it’s a defense of, say, Willie Horton to say Michael Brown didn’t deserve to be gunned down. The moral to the whole affair is that when unarmed people are gunned down by police and you think you have a good joke… you probably don’t.

So while you jam to Ebola news or some retread news about the missing Malaysian airliner, remember that Michael Brown story used to be a thing. And while waxing philosophic about grand juries and rabble-rousing about riots may be over for the mainstream media, the continuing effort to crack wise and make light of killing an unarmed kid is still alive and well in our profession.

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