Trial Magazine

Today’s extraordinary times for civil rights issues have prompted many conversations among my friends and colleagues. Several conversations have been uncomfortable, but they are necessary for finding common ground and the kind of understanding needed to forge a path forward.

One conversation in particular keeps repeating itself: Several friends have said to me, “When I look at you, I don’t see your color. I just see a bad-ass trial lawyer.” I’m always thankful for the compliment. After all, isn’t that the ideal? That we can finally get past issues of color and just see people for who they are, the accomplishments they have made, and the substance of their character? Maybe that is the goal someday. But today is not that day.

Today, seeing color matters. If we are honest with ourselves, we know we see it because we can recognize the lack of it in institutions that need diversity to ensure fairness and equality. We know we cannot fully address the inequities of a criminal justice system when 95% of elected prosecutors in this country are white.¹ When 23 states have an all-white state supreme court.² When, in hundreds of police departments across the country, the percentage of white officers on the force is more than 30 percentage points higher than in the communities they serve.³ We easily and readily identify where color isn’t, so why do we all of a sudden not see it where it is?

I am a Black woman, wife, and mother who is also a lawyer. I am beyond appreciative to those who consider me to be a good one, regardless of my color. But not seeing my color presents a dilemma. Whether I want my Blackness to carry such weight or not, I understand that my success is directly related to the comfort level others may have in giving those like me a chance. Black people in general, and Black women specifically, are making great strides in the legal profession, but according to the Minority Corporate Counsel Association and Vault, only 1.94% of firm equity partners in this country are Black, and Black lawyers are underrepresented relative to other minorities.⁴ I am not a unicorn in terms of intelligence or capability. There are many more “me’s” out there. It’s OK to see the entire package of intelligence, capability, and color. That is how these paltry statistics can begin to rise.

James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” We cannot change the landscape without seeing, acknowledging, and embracing color. The law in its application can and must be color-blind, but until true equality is reached, we the people cannot be.

Danielle Ward Mason is a partner at Sanders Phillips Grossman in Montgomery, Ala., and can be reached at dmason@thesandersfirm.com.

Notes

1. Study Finds 95 Percent of Prosecutors Are White, Equal Justice Initiative, July 8, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/y5ufxwe8; Nicholas Fandos, A Study Documents the Paucity of Black Elected Prosecutors: Zero in Most States, N.Y. Times, July 7, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/y5724eeq; Liz Posner, Nearly All District Attorneys Are White—And That’s a Huge Obstacle to Fighting Mass Incarceration, Salon, Jan. 30, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y6tdshud.
2. Alicia Bannon & Janna Adelstein, State Supreme Court Diversity—February 2020 Update, Brennan Center, Feb. 20, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/yx4xz2h4.
3. Dan Keating & Kevin Uhrmacher, Police Are Consistently Whiter Than the Communities They Work In, Particularly in Urban Areas, Wash. Post, June 4, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y58em3os; Jeremy Ashkenas & Haeyoun Park, The Race Gap in America’s Police Departments, N.Y. Times, Apr. 8, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/y3kspybg.
4. Meg McEvoy, Analysis: Black Workers Are Under-Represented in Legal Industry, Bloomberg Law, June 11, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y4ev7j9k.