How Racially Tolerant Is The Legal Profession In Our Post-Racial Society?
The legal profession must strive to be more racially tolerant if it aspires to be as diverse as the country it serves.
“Now everything I’m not, made me everything I am.” – Kanye West
In the 2000 film Finding Forrester, Rob Brown’s character (Jamal Wallace) is offered the opportunity to attend a private school because of his test scores and basketball skills. In the movie, there is a transitory scene of him taking the train from his home in the Bronx to a prestigious prep school in Manhattan. This brief picture displays a black teenager in street clothes surrounded by older white men in business suits. This quick nondescript scene might not even be noticed by the average movie watcher, but for whatever reason it made an impression on me. I wonder what Wallace was thinking during his subway ride across the city. What was the director trying to convey here? Did he want us to view ourselves in Wallace’s shoes? Did he want us to notice how much Wallace stood out amongst the other train riders? I wonder how many impoverished urban youth ever get the opportunity of a quality education.
Last semester, law students all over the nation participated in on-campus interviews (“OCI”). I wonder how many minority students felt like Wallace during the process. As a minority and the first from my family to attend law school, I sometimes felt like an outsider during OCI. Prior to interviewing, I never have had an extended conversation with a Biglaw attorney. In the beginning of OCI all you want is an offer, by the end all you want is for it to be done. At some points it was Nirvana; at other points it felt like Samsara – the world of confusion and disharmony. It was great meeting with lawyers who genuinely cared and took interest in meeting potential candidates. It was terrible meeting with attorneys who were disinterested at best by your presence and couldn’t be bothered to make eye contact with you. I wonder how many students felt ostracized by OCI. I hope the majority of participants had a rewarding experience.
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The tag line for Finding Forrester is “In an ordinary place, he found the one person to make his life extraordinary.” For thirty-six percent of black males over the age of eighteen, their “ordinary place” is prison. As of 2008, black males age 18 and older accounted for only five percent of the college population. For almost half of the Asian population, their “ordinary place” is community college. Twenty-nine percent of Cambodian Americans and thirty-eight percent of Hmong Americans live at or below poverty. How many minorities ever get the opportunity of a quality education? How many minorities ever meet and are mentored by an informal guidance counselor like Sean Connery’s character (Robert Forrester) in Finding Forrester? This isn’t the movies, to be sure — Wallace only met Forrester by breaking into Forrester’s home. The legal industry and our society as a whole aren’t nearly so forgiving (e.g., the “war on drugs” and its absurd consequences).
Rob Brown, the actor who portrayed Jamal Wallace, is quite the Hollywood story in his own right. With no prior professional or acting experience, Brown tried out as an extra for Finding Forrester and was awarded the lead role for the film. Despite Brown’s continued success, he has still been viewed as a common thief. In the fall of 2013, while shopping for his mother’s graduation present, Brown was confronted by three plainclothes officers. Brown asked to see the officers’ ID, but instead they handcuffed him and paraded him through Macy’s to a holding cell like a criminal. The officers told Brown that “he could not afford to make such an expensive purchase” and accused him of using a fake ID and committing credit card fraud.
Did the scenes and themes of racial prejudices in Finding Forrester imitate his life, or at this moment was his life imitating the art? I wonder what was going through Brown’s mind during the accusations and questioning by the officers. Maybe if this was a movie then Brown would have made it on time to his mother’s graduation from Metropolitan Community College. Unfortunately, after being handcuffed, held, and questioned, Brown missed his mom walk across the stage at graduation. There was no Hollywood ending for Brown in this case. I can only imagine how he must have felt about what had just transpired.
Many people believe the “culture of poverty” has a long half-life, but I believe structural factors play a more significant role in the division of socioeconomic classes. Here, I link the ideas of “culture” and being black because many people conflate and disparagingly use the terms “culture” and “inner city” as code words for black. How many others get profiled on a daily basis like Brown? Perhaps, most prejudice flourishes below the level of conscious thought. Harvard’s Project Implicit lets you diagnose your own implicit attitudes and biases regarding race. Even in our supposedly post-racial society, millennials are less racially tolerant than is commonly believed.
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OCI is one of the many instances where you understand the game, think you understand the game, or are completely clueless. In OCI – like many interview processes – the devil is in the details, and the nuances can be stifling. Many minorities are never afforded the mentorship of a “Robert Forrester.” How many minorities understand the “art of passing?” Is it necessary? During one scene in Finding Forrester, Wallace’s upper-class black teammate states to him, “You may think we’re the same. We’re not.” Early in CBS anchor Julie Chen’s career, she was told point blank, “You will never be on this anchor desk because you’re Chinese.” She then underwent surgery to look less Asian. Prejudices rarely have to be this explicit to be recognized by those who are affected. Minorities can and often do take a hint when an environment is not inclusive.
Perhaps someone new to a field or industry will always feel a sense of dislocation. Internal emotions and external influences can both serve to create a cacophonous feeling with the value system that minorities are expected to engage in. The ultimate questions for minorities may be: How can we fit in? How can we remain true to ourselves? How can we make the system more tolerant of others?
By 2042, it is projected that no one race or ethnicity will be a majority in America. It would be great if the legal industry reflected the diversity of people and culture in our country, but this has never been the case. As
Diversity does not happen by accident. Diversity is not self-executing. The legal profession must strive to be more racially tolerant if it aspires to be as diverse as the country it serves.
UPDATE (12/9/2015, 2:15 p.m.): This post was revised to correct an erroneous statistic about black men and college education in the fourth paragraph.
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Renwei Chung is the DEI Columnist at Above the Law. He currently serves as a Board Advisor for The Diversity Movement (TDM), whose integrated approach enables law firms to build and strengthen culture by tying real-world business outcomes to DEI initiatives via a scalable subscription-based employee experience platform. And he is excited to host TDM’s and Footnote 4’s new podcast Charge the Wave — focused on entrepreneurs, executives, and icons who are assiduously building companies, cultures, and communities.
