The Illusion of Diversity and the Role of the Ethnic Interest Group

Driven by ranking methodologies that score schools based on the amount of minorities that matriculate, law schools have been working furiously to recruit students of color into their ranks. Special ‘diversity’ initiatives are crafted to publicize retention efforts and emphasize the value of diversity in a dynamically evolving, ‘global’ legal profession. Though the ‘advantages’ that come with exposure to brown, black and yellow faces in an American legal industry that is actually resistant to globalization seem dubious, schools openly tout the idea that a more diverse student body will lead to divergent viewpoints toward the law. These differences in turn will 1. enrich the degree and scope of collaboration across the student body, 2. foster more varied and nuanced approaches to the law, and 3. provide opportunities for students to build lasting connections with, and learn from, those significantly different from themselves. The admissions page of one law school, for example, describes its commitment to diversity as such:

Exposure to diverse ideas and viewpoints forces students to think critically about their own beliefs — to question and challenge them. Capital Law School creates a diverse and supportive environment where the exchange of ideas is free-flowing and valued.

However, the supposed gains to be achieved from these diversity initiatives often go unrealized in an educational model that suppresses difference, demands conformity, and prevents students from incorporating their cultural backgrounds as they engage and study the law. Students of color face additional pressures to assimilate in an institution administered primarily by upper-class whites and a student community whose norms and habits are more reflective of their white peers.

The Diversity We Get

Despite a steady influx of minorities, a cursory examination of the law school community reveals anything but a place where the ‘exchange of ideas’ is dynamic and ‘free flowing’. Formulaic methods of teaching, uniformity in subject material and a grading system that pits students competitively against each other rather than collaboratively with each other creates a homogenous learning experience, flattening the very differences that make students of color valuable in the first place. The Socratic Method, which supposedly improves ‘critical lawyering skills,’ provides minimal room for alternative viewpoints and encourages tautological argumentation that is staged, uncreative and rigidly constrained. Exams are graded according to a rubric designed not for innovative thought but for cost-effective administration. Moreover, an exhaustive 1L workload forces students to spend the majority of their time either in the law school or studying, creating an insulated learning environment that minimizes engagement and thoughtful collaboration with other students. Not surprisingly, the average law student receives a streamlined and uniform legal education conspicuously lacking in diversity. The familiar saying of “1L year they break you, 2L year they work you, 3L year they bore you” rings true for nearly everyone.

The most problematic feature about law school, though, is that it leaves no room for students to engage their own unique backgrounds as valuable referents in their study of the law. With the exception of this course, students spend most of their time reading court opinions, policy articles and fact patterns that have little relevance to them as individuals. Amidst the outlining, note-taking and preparation for exams, one’s cultural uniqueness quickly becomes irrelevant. The situation is particularly problematic for students of color as they are forced to shelve their cultural identities in an institution administered primarily by wealthy whites and a student community whose norms and behavior more closely approximate those of their white peers. Not surprisingly, many students of color speak of having to operate within two different worlds – the person they are within the comforts of a support network (assuming one exists) and the person they are outside of it.

What’s the Solution?

All of this criticism, of course, begs the essential question – how does one create a learning environment that actually makes diversity relevant in a meaningful way? While admissions programs geared towards recruiting more students of color might seem like the ideal solution, such policies will not engender greater diversity so long as students’ stories, values and interests have no relevance to their academic lives.

Also, given how entrenched the current law school model has become (as well as the political and private interests attached to it), it is not likely that the administration will make any changes to encourage students to more actively engage their cultural backgrounds. It is not clear to me, moreover, whether such a duty should even lie with the school, whose primary function is to bestow professional skills to future attorneys. One need only guess as to how effective administration-led events such as ‘Asian Heritage Week’ would be at promoting actual diversity.

A Possibility

Enter the Ethnic Student Organization. While groups such as APALSA and BLSA have been derided for balkanizing the student community and reinforcing racial divisions, they represent easily accessible support networks from which students of color can re-connect with and preserve their ‘cultural selves’. Such organizations prove immensely valuable in helping students of color resist the pressures of conformity and retain a sense of community, reinforcing the shared stories and values that make them diverse in the first place.

Moreover, such groups provide critical opportunities for minorities to make their cultural identities meaningful in a way that the study of law does not. For example, students of color often spearhead initiatives that are specific to their respective communities, thus engaging their backgrounds directly as they advance their interests within the law. Such efforts demonstrate to students that their ethnic backgrounds are both relevant and even advantageous as they evolve into future attorneys. In turn, students will likely develop alternative viewpoints and career interests as they progress through law school, a process which other students, faculty and administrators all stand to benefit from in the long run.

Criticizing the Discourse Of Race -- By YoungKim - 27 Feb 2009

A colleague once told me that to acknowledge the preponderance of race in everyday life would be the equivalent of a fish realizing that it is surrounded by water. Regardless of our intuitions, theories, definitions, or beliefs, race is an inevitably pervasive element of the American imagination; it is at once a Miner's Canary, The Problem of the Century. Not surprisingly, few topics of social reality have been subject to as much academic discourse and postulation as race. At varying times and depending upon one’s political stance, it has assumed labels of political race, racial formation, racial essentialism and so on. But does academic discourse on race and its promise of a more egalitarian future even remotely capture the reality of what it means to live in a racialized society? Do we even gain anything from studying the metaphysics and politics of race without listening to how it operates in people’s lives? To me, the resounding answer is no.

Framing the Debate: The Example of Colorblindness

Although colorblindness is in no way exhaustive of the academic theatre of race, the debate that continues to rage over it is exemplary of the polarizing dogmas that characterize modern scholarship on race. At present, we see two distinct camps emerging: advocates of colorblindness, who criticize the divisive effects of recognizing race as a social category, and defenders of race-consciousness, who seek to restore the nexus between race and the allocation of resources and power.

Once the trench-lines are dug and the stage is set, a battle of imaginations ensues. Everyday experiences are grouped and then systematically reduced to statistical analysis (e.g., census studies). Stock stories are replaced by stock theories. Committees are formed and arguments are raised about the nature of race, its historical antecedents and whether it is an amalgamation of other social forces – gender, class, culture – or a purely imagined social construct.

The Meaninglessness of Theoretical Superstitions

It is no doubt to me that scholars of race, who construct these frameworks and diffuse their ideas to the masses, are well-intentioned and attuned to the goal of seeking a remedy to a problem that strikes them personally as wrong (racial inequality and stratification). Yet conspicuously absent within the debate over race is not just whether these theories adequately capture the everyday reality of race, but more importantly whether making these inquiries are even worth anything at all. As I think Felix Cohen would see it, constructing abstract “systems” out of the things we see and do on a regular basis are not fruitful inquiries that get us any closer to a more racially inclusive society.

Take racial profiling, for example. If we see a cop unreasonably abusing and detaining a juvenile black, does it matter whether one labels this an individualized expression of a stereotype (colorblindness) or the reinforcement of hierarchies of privilege (race-consciousness)? Resolving the debate certainly does not help the juvenile, who ends up in prison regardless of how we codify his experience. Even from the standpoint of the enraged observer, the reality that she has experienced race in a way that solidifies her conviction to fight racism is not adequately captured by some abstract theory of racial progressivism.

The compulsive need to hammer out some intrinsic quality to race so as to better understand and control its consequences is tantamount to the worst form of scholarly “magic.” And in the never-ending feud to determine which framework more effectively “captures racism”, the science of race becomes tragically detached from the reality of race.

The View from the Ground: Toward a Functional Approach

As a student, I have always prided myself on my ability to apply frameworks of analyses to “racial projects” at the individual and macro-level. Two months ago, however, I found myself in San Francisco’s drug court witnessing a deep racial divide separating the room: the white judge, sheriff, stenographer and prosecutor on one side, and the deep sea of black and brown seated at the other. It occurs to me now that I had processed the entire scene as an experience with race itself, touching off a fervent desire to do something to change it. Whether the event was actually a product of “institutional racial hegemony” or some other theoretical abstraction, however, meant no difference to how I felt in the courtroom. The desire to mobilize was driven simply by the witnessing of a powerful racial moment with my own two eyes.

The problem with racial discourse is not just a philosophical one. Magical theories on racial “systems” are often accompanied by equally abstract principles about how best to mobilize social action and effectuate policy. It seems to me here that Robinson’s insights are particularly useful. Perhaps instead of resorting to theoretical superstitions to resolve our insecurities about the future of race, we should instead be taking a trip to the jailhouse ourselves; to put our ears to the ground and actually listen to how people are experiencing race.

Conclusion

If “a thing is what it does”, it seems obvious to me that racism cannot be “explained away” by some morally neutral theory about social organization – it is at its heart something that affects us deeply, incites our anger and drives us to action. The Civil Rights movement has been subject to endless anthropological and sociological data-mining, none of which seem to recognize the simple reality that people saw something wrong and decided to band together to change it. I very much doubt, for example, that Martin Luther King was driven to action by some abstract theory about how best to envision the future of race in America. More likely, he heard the stories of those around him and made the simple but noble decision that something needed to be done. For those of us who want to challenge racism, perhaps we should be doing more of the same.

• In the end, I have the feeling that this essay is a complex and subtle attempt to win an argument against no opposition. It's not clear to me that anyone is motivated to disagree with your conclusions (I certainly am not), and it's not apparent to me that anything has been said or thought in the course of the essay that would justify disagreement. Your basic attitude appears to be that a great deal of disputing has gone on in the past, most or all of which is irrelevant; the conclusions which follow from your "functional" approach don't seem to be at odds with anything except a "I don't see no racism around here" position, which we are almost all likely to reject out of hand. So perhaps the most useful step you could take in improving the paper is to show what objections to your point of view you think are worthy of discussion, and to discuss them.

• Though I found your thoughts to be well made, I take issue with the view that racial frameworks are meaningless and desire to seek a remedy. Racial theorists do not necessarily function to provide microwave-ready solutions to the problems of racism. As you yourself admitted, race is deeply entrenched in our society and the way it operates in our lives is not always as startling as being a Black man pulled over due to racial profiling. Race theorists are able to bring attention to the themes that connect our everyday experiences and encourage others to think more critically about society and one's role in it. These frameworks stimulate thought, passion, and yes, even the social action that you spoke of. The complexity of racism is so vast that to take action without recognition of the source of the problem would be foolhardy and would only create a small, quick fix to a pervasive problem. Now, I'm not saying you are entirely wrong. I do agree that there is a point where talking will only get you but so far, however, to devalue the purpose of race scholarship is an unfair valuation of that body of work. Scholarly writing may not help the juvenile facing a prison sentence but acting blindly without a full recognition of the problem can prove to be a disservice as well. Your piece was very well written, thought provoking (clearly), and as a former Africana Studies major, it made me step back and think "Well, why DID I decide choose to study that particular field?". I don't argue against the main conclusion of your argument but just invite you consider that even though analytical frameworks on race don't provide easy answers or instant solutions to everyday problems, they nonetheless, have a value that shouldn't be so quickly admonished.

• Hey Ricardo, I created a separate topic for your second paper so our table of contents don't overlap (it might be confusing to readers in determining which paper is yours). The new link can be found here. Hope that helps!

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