From Michigan to Cincinnati: Our Fate in Their Hands

It didn't take us long to find each other the progressive students, the students of color at Boalt Hall. We came demanding answers to the frustrating statistics showing the lack of diversity at the top public law school in the state. We came wanting to learn strategies and solutions, and needing to learn how to reverse the reactionary Supreme Court decisions that had turned back the gains of the civil rights movement. Some of us were loud, in class and in the hallways, seeking each other out, learning quickly who we were and why we came to law school. Others of us were quieter, but spoke in different ways. Some of us were lucky enough to be in the same "module," the group of 30 students with whom you take all of your first year classes. Many of us were in the same big section, the grouping of three modules with whom you take your larger lectures. We were easy to find in those big rooms of 90 there were so few of us. We became smaller in number when we counted those who would meet our eyes and nod in silent assent, "Yes, I'm like you. I agree; this place is scary. Let's do something." By the end of that first month of the first year of law school, some of our questions had turned up answers. We found students and alumni who had been there "before," meaning before Proposition 209 and before the students changed color and lowered their voices. Our 2L and 3L Raza were invigorated by our questions, and they set up a teach-in for us that led to another for our whole class. Through the teach-in process, we educated both ourselves and others. Race, gender, sexuality they were not subjects we talked about in class, unless we were the ones raising them. Our professors remembered an angry Boalt in 1997, and the prospects of returning to that time scared them, and so they viewed us with some apprehension. There were some professors, gracias a Dios, who would continue conversations about these issues. Most would not, viewing our questions as tangential, off-topic, or an uncomfortable topic for public discussion. We were learning a foreign language. We were struggling to understand how the law as applied to our communities was supposedly "objective," especially when we saw it play out so differently. Learning the law as a first year student of color was both an empowering and disempowering experience. Our first year texts feature mostly exclamation points and expletives in the margins that we had written there in moments of astonishment, anger, and dismay. We couldn't believe this "truth," yet there it was, in black letter law, being reproduced again and again. Oftentimes judges writing the opinions would lament their hands being tied by precedent, but that was cold comfort to us since the result seemed to always, "coincidentally" favor the rich, the powerful, and the White. To learn how to remake it, we had to first learn the system and then find the energy to explode it. Our time was limited. We had to choose