A community dialogue about racial justice

Last week, we held the virtual community forum  “Police Violence, Race, and Protest.” It was a virtual full house! More than 175 students, faculty, staff, and community members participated -- a great showing that reflects the interest in the serious social issues implicated by current events. I offered opening remarks for the forum.

King Hall has a long history of student activism and community discussion of social issues. I recently blogged about the 1969 "open house" titled " Minority Students Demand Justice," in which students sought greater diversity in the law school. More recently, we have held town halls to discuss the Trump administration's various immigration and other policies.

It truly is an incredible historical moment. We are in the midst of a global pandemic that basically shut down the world. Our ways of living and learning changed literally overnight. Anxieties over public health, and the health of our families and friends, entered our lives. Tens of thousands have died.

And we now mourn the senseless loss of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. I must admit that I cannot watch the video anymore; it is upsetting beyond belief. It makes me think of many similar indelible images.  One of them is the 1991 beating of Rodney King, which led to mass violence in Los Angeles, my hometown. As a young boy, I remember watching news footage of the area then known as Watts (now called South Central Los Angeles) in flames. Sadly, over the course of my life, I can think of all too many killings of black people.

And the frequency of killings by police is precisely the reason we have such a collective sense of frustration, anger, grief – and, for me, a sense of helplessness. Our society unfortunately is plagued by institutionalized and systemic racism and the legacy of slavery. That is clear from our the disparate racial impacts of the criminal justice system, as Michelle Alexander insightfully considers in her book The New Jim Crow. Such disparate impacts are also covered in classes at King Hall, such as Professor Elizabeth Joh’s The Law of Policing.

The inequalities do not end with policing but can be seen in income, wealth, health outcomes, education, and much more.  The questions we have to ask each other are: How do we move our society forward? How do we make our society just?

In my remarks, I thanked the Black Law Students Association for its inspirational call to action, and Chancellor Gary May for his heartfelt statement on the George Floyd killing and the response.

In a statement I wrote on June 2,  I quoted my friend Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig on her feelings as an African American woman with black children. I then borrowed from the words of another friend, Dean Mario Barnes of  the University of Washington School of Law:

“For members of [the] black community, please know we see you and acknowledge the rage, hurt, fear and isolation you are feeling. In the midst of these challenging times, please know that we stand with you in the pursuit of equality and justice. We are here to ease the hurt and uplift you; we are in community with you.”

I ended my remarks by announcing that the law school will introduce a racial justice speaker series, so that the forum is not the end of the discussion.

The forum allowed us to hear from one another, and for us to collectively think about what we can do as a community.

We heard from many participants about actions that students, faculty and others can take to educate our community about racial injustice. Many students offered concrete ideas about possible curriculum changes, including integrating race into all of classes at the law school and adding Critical Race Theory to the first-year curriculum.

Hopefully, we can continue the dialogue. There is much work to be done.