Racism In Law Schools

There is an unstated assumption that racism only occurs when there is intent to do racial harm. When individual intent to cause racial harm is used as the measure of racism, the perceptions of people of color can be disregarded. Invidious intent must be present in order for events of discrimination to be view as valid. When the requirement of intent is disregarded and replaced with perspective and understanding of the students of color, it is found that these students constantly negotiate and contest systemic racism in law schools. These students must overcome a wide variety of hurdles as a result of color-blind racism. These overt and covert forms of racism then becomes a defining component of their law school education. Joking seems the most

To this day these students face the high cost of racism while pursuing educational goals. In Moore’s closing chapter she addresses one of the things I pointed out about choosing to attend these elite law schools. In her own words she tells us that if students choose to participate unquestioningly in this so-called community, they must essentially objectify themselves, removing their personal life experiences and the recognition of the histories of their communities from the law school discourse in which the engage. To reject this dehumanizing white frame, the must either attempt to disengage from their law school experiences or choose to fight an ongoing daily battle against the power of an institutional space with deeply racialized norms. Even though she shows that this mental and emotional consequences of these paradoxical choices represent an extremely high cost that only students of color are required to pay in their pursuit of a legal education. Once again I point out that there are other schools and these students have choices. I’m not condoning it or saying its right, but if you don’t have the stomach for it and move on attend another school. Just as the excerpt about Joseph. He stated that even though the drug dealer had the same name as him, he took the exam anyway because

By these being elite schools, one would think that these students, white as well as a few students of color could articulate themselves better in their interviews. I don’t know if it was Moore’s intention to let the reader come to this conclusion as I have. Many of the students over used the phrase “It’s like and seems like, and then like etc. On one interview I think I recall the word “like” used three times in the same sentence. For example Tiffany starts off “Um, every time, it, it, seems like, well, the two times I went, it seemed like there was the group of black people, and there was like five or six of us, and we were all congregated in the corner, and then there was, like, everybody else.” These aren’t students straight out of high school. At least they have an undergraduate degree; at most they have a master’s degree. Yet they conduct an interview using casual language as if they were hanging