Today’s column is about a different type of race. The one that few like to talk about openly, especially during a job interview.
Last week, police officers shot and killed African-Americans Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge and Philando Castile in Minneapolis. A few days later, Micah Johnson, an African-American military-trained sniper, shot 11 police officers, killing five, at a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas. Because these opposing tragedies happened so close in time, both sides spoke their mind. Some of them did not mince words about their thoughts about Black Lives Matter, white privilege and police brutality.
Dallas Police Chief David Brown threw down a call to action to those who fear the police: put down the protest signs and sign a job application with the police department. They are encouraged to solve the problems they are protesting about.
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For lawyers who are not interested in wearing a badge, they should interpret Chief Brown’s call to community service by being a prosecutor, public defender, judge, mediator or a public interest lawyer.
The problem is that we don’t want racists or violent anarchists holding jobs where peoples’ lives and livelihoods are in their hands. But how can an employer tell whether someone is racist? Or for that matter, someone’s implicit bias, preferences, and prejudices? No one is going to disclose that information on their résumé.
Or what if their résumé shows that they attended several minority sensitivity training classes? Wouldn’t an employer wonder just what made them attend those classes in the first place?
Some applicants make it easy. They spew inflammatory and blatantly racist rhetoric on social media without controlling their privacy settings. But most people take the basic steps before starting their job hunt: update their Linkedin profile, delete controversial social media posts, and to the extent possible, maximize positive exposure on internet searches.
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And assuming people enter the job with a color-blind mentality, the passage of time can change that. A prosecutor or judge who has worked in the criminal courts for a number of years has likely dealt with hundreds of cases. They will see patterns – they think they know the characteristics of those who will be scared straight and those who are lost causes. So they may prosecute or issue harsher sentences on some, relying on experience and statistics. But from the perspective of the one facing jail time, they see a system that doesn’t give a damn and is out to get them.
Some departments require their staff to regularly attend sessions on race relations. But most of the time, when people are forced to attend one of these sessions, the interest in learning is not there. They are more likely to spend their time hoping that a rare Pokémon will show up in their smartphones during class.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a foolproof hiring method that will weed out racists from the police force or the courts. Like cockroaches, they operate in the dark and scurry away only when the light is shined on them. Chief Brown implemented a community policing system in 2012 that for the most part seems to be working. This system relies on increased transparency, reducing the issuance of stupid and unnecessarily expensive moving violation tickets, and firing poorly performing police officers.
Maybe a good place to start is for everyone to remember that the purpose of the criminal justice system is to serve and protect its citizens.
Shannon Achimalbe was a former solo practitioner for five years before deciding to sell out and get back on the corporate ladder. Shannon can be reached by email at [email protected] and via Twitter: @ShanonAchimalbe.