Government

SMU Law Alum Salman Bhojani And Other Attorneys Of Color Continue To Face Blatant Discrimination In Local And National Elections

Diversity is not self-executing. It must be fought for, every step of the way.

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Salman Bhojani (Photo via Linkedin)

“You ain’t thinking about the people that are looking like me and you / True, you got better sh*t to do.” — J. Cole

Macomb County, Michigan, has become nationally known as one of three counties that delivered Donald Trump the presidential election. Right or wrong, Macomb County is now viewed as a symbol of U.S. political realignment.

I’m very familiar with this area. From 2005 to 2008, I door-knocked over 20,000 homes in this region as an Edward Jones financial advisor in Utica, a city in Macomb County. After shaking thousands of hands and sitting at hundreds of dinner tables in the neighborhoods of Macomb, it would become rather clear that the Big Three’s backyard would begrudgingly pick Barack Obama over Mitt Romney, as the former candidate favored a government bailout of the U.S. auto industry. We saw a repeat of this history lesson with the coal companies and West Virginia during the last presidential race.

Less than a decade later, the Blue Wall would not hold. To the national audience’s surprise, Trump took Macomb — defeating Hillary Clinton 54 percent to 42 percent. He ended up capturing the state of Michigan by 10,704 votes. And the margin of victory (48,348 votes) in my old stomping grounds made all the difference. So many political pundits, analysts, and prognosticators missed the seismic shift in areas like the Rust Belt. They simply didn’t spend enough time on the ground in these flyover states. They ignored the seismographs and seismoscopes.

In other words, they didn’t have their fingers on the pulse of the heartbeat of the nation. They never saw it coming.

Throughout the last presidential election, I wrote about my fears and anxiety over the harmful rhetoric of the campaigns, the bias in our media coverage, and the prevalent anti-immigration attitude of our country.

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Sadly, I wonder if future elections will be any different. I’m apt to think it will get worse before it gets better. But I also remain hopeful and believe in the long arc of the moral universe. I wonder if the majority of political pundits, analysts, and prognosticators will swing and miss again so badly. Will they feign ignorance about the wave of nationalism swallowing up the country? Or this time, will we see it coming?

At last week’s Asian Pacific Interest Section of the State Bar of Texas (APIS) Conference, the APIS Chair, Punam Kaji, informed me of some rather unsettling news about a local campaign in her recently moved-into residential area of Texas.

A fellow SMU Law Alum (Class of ’13), Salman Bhojani, is currently running for a seat in the nonpartisan City Council race of Euless, a suburb of Fort Worth, Texas. As reported by the local affiliate of CBS: Bhojani’s opponent is passing out flyers that highlight his Muslim religion and voters have called him a terrorist to his face. Bhojani’s own State Representative wrote in a series of Facebook posts that Bhojani is “a dangerous man” and “a Muslim, lawyer, and a lifelong Democrat” whose “ideas for our community would scare a majority of our residents, but he is very sneaky in how he presents himself.”

Bhojani probably did not envision this type of reception when he threw his hat in the ring. As reported by the Dallas Observer: Bhojani is a “Euless attorney, who became a U.S. citizen in 2006 before putting himself through law school at SMU, thought his suburb’s council could use a little more diversity, and decided to do something about it.” Not surprisingly, Bhojani would be the council’s only minority.

Yesterday, I reached out to Salman Bhojani and I asked him: “Win or lose — what are some of the most important lessons you will take away from this election?”

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Bhojani responded:

This election has taught me that politics can be a very dirty business, but it doesn’t have to be. My opponent, her patron Rep. Stickland, and a significant minority of her supporters have brought bigotry, lies and negative messaging into the campaign. They have turned my faith and my ethnicity into campaign issues and rallied support against those issues. They have falsely attributed to me views that I do not hold and rallied support against those views. This is a shameful way to seek office.

My campaign has done it the right way — by reaching out to voters, talking about the issues and presenting a positive vision for our city. What keeps me going is the relentless enthusiasm and hard work of my family and my campaign volunteers, and the many supportive comments we have received from people across Euless, all around Texas and even elsewhere in the country. Whatever the outcome of this election, I’ll always be proud of having built my campaign on values of volunteerism, inclusivity, and civic-mindedness.

When I began my career as a financial advisor, I was attracted to the “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” ideology and drawn to the siren song of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism philosophy. I believed it all boiled down to “the economy, stupid” and was a disciple of “Reaganomics.” I even had a picture of Ronald Reagan with his buddies Bob Hope, John Wayne, and Dean Martin hanging in my Utica office.

Somewhere along my door-knocking travels, I began to view the world less as black and white and much more nuanced. In the summer of 2007, I decided to hang a picture of our first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, with his brothers Robert and Edward, alongside the famous Regan portrait.

Most of my clients loved both pictures. Known as an advisor who was rather apolitical and much more drawn to business and economics, they knew they could wax philosophical in my office. I loved hearing the diverse thoughts and commentary of my clients, who were mostly members of the Greatest, Silent, and Baby Boomer Generations.

Through my conversations, I was able to build an investment office of around $2 million in assets to over $14 million in assets in less than three years. I believe this is because I treated my clients as if they were my family. I knew my clients’ children’s, grandchildren’s, and pets’ names. I sent birthday and holiday cards daily. I attended their Thanksgiving dinners, family reunions, and funerals. I thought I knew each of them like the back of my hands.

One day, an older client asked me why I hung a Kennedy portrait next to my nice Reagan picture. I told him to better represent the political spectrum in my office. He then told me that I should think about removing it from the wall — “after all, that’s the guy who gave the n*ggas their voting rights,” he said. I was in total disbelief that my client had just uttered those feelings so nonchalantly. I never expected to witness this type of attitude, fear, and hatred coming from one of my clients — especially from him.

Underlying attitudes like this and blatant discrimination against fellow attorneys like Salman Bhojani are the reason I began writing for Above the Law. I began my first ATL piece in December of 2014, with the introduction:

There is a popular questionnaire composed of five questions going around the internet that reveals how many of the 523 people in congress are like you. To no surprise, I didn’t even get to the fifth question before it stated, “There are zero (0) people in congress like you.” I know a lot of law students who become quite incensed at the thought of affirmative action. They acknowledge slavery was racist, but deny the thought of any present-day systematic issues regarding race….

Whether it is on purpose, accident, or some crazy anomaly, the legal industry’s statistics speak for themselves. Here in Dallas, not only has diversity in Biglaw not improved, it is actually getting worse. I don’t mean to insinuate that the lack of diversity is a result of the lack of effort to promote diversity. I do believe that many people would love a more diverse workplace, especially here in Texas. I don’t know the best way to tackle this issue, but I do know it is a concern.

Today, May 5, is the Election Day for the City of Euless. Whether Bhojani wins or loses his election, I will continue to shine a spotlight on attorneys like him and other attorneys of color who are attempting to become trailblazers in their communities.

We must continue to address the harmful rhetoric of current political campaigns, the bias in our media coverage, and the prevalent anti-immigration attitude of our country. And when there is a backlash from attempting to diversify our professional organizations and local communities, we can no longer claim that we “never saw it coming.”

Karen Korematsu (in red) surrounded by APIS Reception Attendees

The theme at this year’s APIS Conference was “Our Time is Now.” Karen Korematsu, Founder and Executive Director of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute, reminded the APIS audience of how far we’ve come and implored us to become more involved in our communities — to make a difference and keep the ball rolling forward.

The other featured speaker, Andrew C. Kim, questioned the Conference’s theme. He stated, “we are proclaiming ‘our time is now’, but is it? I’m not so sure. I do know that if we do not speak up when there is injustice and we just keep our heads down — to go along to get along, like most of our parents taught us — there will be no change. We must act if indeed our time is now.”

Actions speak louder than words. Faith without works is dead. I learned these lessons growing up. But I was only recently reminded that diversity is not self-executing. It must be fought for, every step of the way.

Renwei Chung is the Diversity Columnist at Above the Law. You can contact Renwei by email at projectrenwei@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter (@renweichung), or connect with him on LinkedIn. 

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