Aleesha Washington Gonzales, III (fictional name, real person) complains that her students, most of whom are white, give her bad teaching evaluations year after year.  Her evaluations are not terrible, just decidedly lower than those of her white colleagues, most of whom teach exactly the same way she does.  After visiting their classes and talking with them, she is certain that she is preparing just as carefully as they do, asking the same kind of questions, assigning the same readings, and standing and dressing the same way.

Not every student rates her low.  But enough do that her average ends up lower than that of many of her colleagues, including some who Aleesha is sure are worse professors than she.  One in particular, a white male from a fancy school and with a confident demeanor, hardly prepares for class, yet scores high with his students year after year, while Aleesha burns the midnight oil going over and over her notes and reading the latest law review articles in order to prepare for class the next day.

Aleesha says the low evaluations would not bother her, but they are one of several measures that the law school administration considers in deciding raises and promotions, and she doesn’t want to be stuck at the low end of the ladder.

MOM SAYS that a certain number of white students are apt to be uncomfortable with a black or Latina professor, particularly one who evaluates them negatively, as a Socratic professor must do from time to time.  Aleesha should therefore stop trying to be Superprof.  Nothing is wrong with reading the latest law review article or trying a new pedagogical approach from time to time.  But burning the midnight oil every night before class is apt to be counterproductive, particularly if it renders her sleep-deprived and out of sorts the next day.

Aleesha should stop flagellating herself.  If she is certain that she is teaching pretty much the same way her colleagues do and preparing to the same extent, she should continue pretty much as she has been.  She should, however, make an appointment with the dean, explain her problem, ask him or her to read some of the literature about the difficulty professors of color experience in establishing credibility in the classroom, and then take action.

In the meantime, she should try to relax as much as possible while teaching, try a little humor, and make sure she pursues her scholarship sufficiently to enable her reputation to rise.  She should realize that even the most prominent professors of color occasionally run into a buzzsaw of student opposition (see, e.g., Derrick Bell, The Price and Pain of Racial Remedies, Stanford Law School J., May 1986).

In other words, it’s not just her.  Student discomfort with minority professors is usually a product of structural features in the environment.  Until these change, professors of color will continue to run a gantlet of lowered expectations, whispers, and the occasional  episode of outright rejection.  Sympathetic administrators and colleagues can do much to alleviate her situation.  If they don’t, she should make an appointment with the university ombudsman or affirmative action officer and discuss concrete measures to improve the lives of all her colleagues of color across the university.

Bobette Espinoza DuBois, III, (fictional name, composite person) who teaches law at a well respected regional school, School A, would like to leave her school for greener pastures at School B.  With a good publishing record and better-than-average teaching evaluations, she thinks she should be a strong candidate for a lateral appointment, but wonders whether some of her colleagues at School A may say unkind things when a member of the appointments committee at School B telephones to ask what they think of her.

Bobette, who has endured a number of bruising battles with a few of her colleagues at School A over the years, fears the worst.  These struggles include having had words with several conservative white colleagues over student affirmative action, and a sharp dispute with a fellow professor of color over tenure for a third colleague, who teaches in the law school clinic.  That colleague, who won tenure, would obviously say nice things about her, but she fears the other professor might not.

Bobette wonders how she can find out what her detractors are likely to say about her and whether she should prepare a written response she can give the appointments committee at the other school in advance, rebutting what the naysayers are likely to say.

MOM SAYS that Bobette needs to learn to play Joe Cool.  There is no way she can obtain the information she desires without generating suspicion and making matters worse.  Learning to live with uncertainty is inherent in being a minority professor at a dominantly white law school.  If she arranges for a friend (a shill) to call up one of the likely detractors at School A, the detractor, realizing that the caller is a friend of Bobette, may decline to be candid.  If Bobette asks someone who is not a known friend to make the inquiry, apart from its dubious ethicality, the whole thing may backfire.  The person called may ask highly particularized questions (“what do you know about her?”  “Do you really have a slot in her field”), also revealing the hoax. 

Equally important, the information such an inquiry may yield is unreliable.  The same individual, asked by person P on one occasion what he thinks of Bobette, may say something completely different the next day when approached by another caller.  Everything depends on the individual’s frame of mind, how the caller puts the question, and who the caller is. Bobette’s colleague on one occasion may think “Good riddance” and give her a rave review in hopes of unloading her on another school.  On a different occasion, that same colleague may run her down, thinking it would be fun to have her around to torture one more year.

MOM SAYS:  Satire and humor are powerful weapons that should be deployed only with great care.  Classical satirists such as Voltaire, Swift, and, in our time, Russell Baker, were at pains to limit the tool to exposing the foibles of the high and mighty.  They rarely, if ever, made fun of the poor, the halt, and the lame.

From this perspective, telling a joke at the expense of a powerful figure like President Bush is quite different from composing a satire mocking, say, desperate undocumented Mexicans who cross the Arizona desert in search of work. 

One of the challenges I faced when writing HUNGRY FOR MORE: A Keeping it Real Guide for Black Women on Weight and Body Image was convincing my editors of the connection between working out and hair.  What was an obvious nexus to me was a mystery to those with “wash and wear” do’s. After much debate, I had to break it all the way down.  The following is an excerpt from HUNGRY about the trouble with hair. 

 And oh yes, Merry Christmas and Happy Kwanza to all and to all a Good Fight.                                

                                           ****                              

Since when we discovered chitlins, the length and texture of black hair have been a source of classism, political identity, and mainstream acceptance. As slaves, black women covered their hair with "do rags," or cut it off or wore plaits while working the fields. However, when a white slave-owner fathered a child by a black woman, that newborn’s hair often was more straight than nappy. Thus, Caucasian-type hair gradually came to be considered "good" hair (as in white) while tresses that were naturally tightly curled or "nappy" were labeled "bad.”      

Unfortunately this kind of thinking still exists in the black community, influenced not only by intraracial prejudices but also by the Eurocentric mass media that equates beauty with looking white. As a result, many black women press, perm, or weave their hair straight in order to be considered attractive and conventional.        

Black women who work out regularly tend to opt for natural styles, braids, wigs, twists, and dreadlocks--which are perfectly fine if you own your own business or work in education, the arts, or other professions that require less conformity. However, in corporate America, those who fit into the company culture are considered valuable employees. Black women working in a conservative environment are less inclined to want to risk rocking the boat by wearing their hair naturally, which might be considered too Afrocentric for a company’s image. Blending in without drawing attention to your hair--no matter how qualified you are--could mean a promotion or a raise in pay. Even today, cornrows and French braids raise eyebrows in some quarters and are considered unprofessional.   The urgent health crisis, however, begs the question: Does a black woman have to choose between being in shape and looking beautiful? Faced with the current obesity predicament, isn’t it time we viewed things through a different lens, adopting a new vision of beauty for African Americans and all women that relies less on superficiality and more on physical and emotional well-being?

From the halls of Congress to local school districts to worried suburban and inner city homes, Americans are experiencing collective shock at the increasing numbers of fat kids. Some experts have even gone so far as to predict that unless the obesity rates among all children is reduced and reversed, the current generation (so-called “Generation XXXL”) may be the first ever whose life expectancy will be shorter than that of their parents.

African American and Latino children have been particularly hard hit by the childhood obesity crisis. Studies show that almost 36 percent of black children between the ages of six and eleven are overweight, and more than 19 percent are considered obese. Among twelve- to nineteen-year-olds, 40 percent are overweight and nearly 24 percent are obese.

Mexican American children fare even worse. According to the American Obesity Association, nearly 40 percent of Mexican American children aged six to eleven are overweight and almost 44 percent are obese.

Economics and weight are closely related. According to the American Obesity Association, “overweight affects African Americans across all socioeconomic levels. Minorities with low incomes, however, appear to have the greatest likelihood of being overweight, and among Mexican Americans the rate of overweight is about 13 percent higher for families living below the poverty line versus above the poverty line.”

In addition, supermarket chains that serve affordable nutritious fruits, vegetables, and lean meats are missing from low-income neighborhoods. In an effort to make food budgets stretch, many families cook meals high in fat and starch.  Feeling deprived in other areas of their lives, people living in poverty might reward themselves with cookies, cakes, and other satisfying sweets.

And of course this is the “video game” generation. Kids just aren’t getting the exercise they should. I  recommend integrating physical activity into your family’s daily routine. For example, climb stairs instead of taking the elevator, walk your child to and from school when possible, find a family bowling league, or include a game of volleyball or basketball in your weekend barbecues. Go bike riding, swim, or jump rope. These are all activities that will benefit even the youngest members of the family.

It’s also important to let your children know about weight-related diseases such as hypertension, cancer, and diabetes common among your relatives.

The goal is to enlighten and inform, not to scare your kids. There is too much denial. Speaking openly and honestly will help children be better educated about choices they make for their own lives.

Youngsters should be taught why not all foods are good for every body, and that food allergies are common problems for African Americans.

You don’t have to be a doctor to discuss in simple language how the liver and kidneys function, and why it’s so important to maintain a healthy heart and healthy weight.
.

Must I Include Those Other Groups?

Rasheed Washington, III (fictional name, real person) writes that a number of Latino and Asian students have been politely asking him when he plans to incorporate those groups into his “Race, Racism, and American Law” seminar.  Rasheed has been teaching the class for years with a focus on African Americans and wants to keep things that way, because he sees blacks as central to American civil rights thought and history.  He also thinks that their legal problems, including slavery, Jim Crow, school segregation, and the right to vote, define American legal history in a way that those of the other groups don’t.  Since a semester only contains fourteen weeks, he doesn’t see how he could get through the material if he included treatment of less foundational issues.  But with the number of black students in the student body remaining more or less constant from year to year and the number of Latinos and Asian-Americans exploding, Washington has been feeling pressure to expand his course coverage. 

MOM SAYS that Rasheed, as a sensitive educator, should pay attention to the students’ concerns.  Nothing is wrong with offering a class—or writing an article or book, for that matter—on the legal problems of just one group. The problem is that the other groups have an equal claim to coverage, as well.

Perhaps, to avoid confusion, Rasheed should retitle his seminar “African Americans, Racism, and American Law.”  Perhaps he could offer such a course one semester and a broad, comparative course that includes coverage of all the main racial groups the next, or offer them in alternating years. Perhaps his school will hire a Latino or Asian law professor who has an interest in teaching such a course, so that Rasheed can continue teaching his black-themed course while the new professor teaches one with a broad focus.

If Rasheed opts to broaden his own course, he will find plenty of good teaching materials and meaty legal issues to cover.  For Latinos, these include immigration hassles, problems with English-Only laws, bilingual and migrant education, land theft, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and court translators and interpreters.  Asian-American legal history includes many of those same issues, plus Japanese internment and reparations, Asian land laws, and laws that essentially limited naturalization to free, white persons for 160 years.  Native American issues include genocide, forced removal, treaty breaches, adoption, and the role of Indian schools.  Racism, dragnets, and detention of Arabs and Muslims add an additional, very current topic.

With society’s increasing complexity, traditional civil rights courses limited to the histories and fortunes of just one group are becoming less and less popular with students and less relevant to society’s needs.  Mom says that Rasheed should “go with the flow,” broaden his horizons, and open his courses to everyone.  The dean of instruction will be happy and, who knows, Rasheed may find himself enjoying his newly overflowing, multiracial civil rights classes.

We know about the appalling declines in African-American law student enrollments and retention (see an article as far back as 1998 by the late Judge A. Leon Higginbotham linked above)—and the numbers for Black men are even worse.

(See a recent resolution on the issue of Black student enrollment by the National Bar Association here and a general ABA Report on Minorities in the Legal Profession here.) 

Presumably, as we get the number of Black students back up, we also need to increase or at least maintain, the numbers of African American law professors.

Current Blackprofs:  What unsolicited advice can you give soon-to-be Blackprofs about entering the teaching market?  In the spirit of Spencer Overton’s list of “myths” for new Black law students to avoid, here’s a few about the teaching market to get us started...

 Myth #1: “We’re All that We Say We Are.”

Don’t believe the hype!   Law teaching is a wonderful profession; you can have a positive impact on many lives.  But it is better to enter it with both eyes open.  You’d be surprised at the number of folks who go into law school interviews without the basic 411. 

What a school says about itself (on its website, in the catalog and other “puff” materials) is just the beginning.  Read between the lines. 

Will you be one of only 2 or 3 people of color teaching there?  How do the numbers compare to other schools in the same city or region?  How many faculty of color are tenured?  Do they play influential roles in setting and implementing the school’s mission?  

Who else teaches in your field?  Does she or he have a collegial reputation?   Is your field taken seriously by other faculty members?  Is there a formal promotion and tenure mentoring process? 

What are others saying about the school?  I’m talking about more than rankings here.  Have you heard anything about the school’s internal politics?  Have you approached the POC faculty at the school to get their perspectives on the place? 

Myth #2:  “The (diversity) check’s in the mail.”

Look for the evidence.  All schools include the standard non-discrimination policy in their recruitment materials.  What is the real deal on diversity?  Are people of color represented among the faculty, administration, and staff?  Are they working at a range of seniority levels?  Have faculty of color left recently for other schools?  If so, why? 

What about the student body?  Is diversity a recent concern, or are efforts consistent or improving over time?  Talk with BLSA (see photo of National Black Law Students Association Executive Board) and other student of color organizations. 

 Do students feel that race, gender, class, and other priority issues are being covered well in the curriculum?  How are the retention and bar passage rates among students of color? 

 If there are problems in these areas, is the school taking concrete steps to address them?

Myth #3:  “I can meet with 20 schools in 2 days and remember the names of everyone on the hiring committees.”

Plan your “meet market” strategy.  If you happen to be a “hot” candidate because of your fabulous resume and/or hard-to-find teaching area, congratulations!  You are likely to get a lot of calls for interviews at the AALS Fall recruitment conference.  These are relatively short interviews, usually with several faculty members in the room.   

If you do get a lot of calls, it is OK to say “no” to schools from which you know you would never accept an offer given geographical or other priorities.  (This opens a slot for others.)  Give yourself time to breathe between meetings. Try to schedule your first-choice interviews for mid-morning slots.  You (and the interviewers) will have had coffee, and will have gotten through the first one or two awkward meetings. 

Try to keep a dinner or lunch slot open, since interested committees may call you back immediately for a longer interview.  Keep your ears open; Blackprofs and others at the conference may well share important information about hidden agendas at some schools.

Finally, don’t wait for the AALS process to get going.  Target those schools in which you already have an interest by sending a cover letter with teaching interests and a resume to the Dean (or the Chair of the Appointments Committee if you know who that is). CC a faculty member who you’ve met and talked with who has agreed to be supportive of your candidacy.

 Myth #4:  “It’s just an informal chat with a few of our faculty members.”

If you do get one or more call-backs for on-campus interviews, congratulations!  You’ve made it to the crucial second round.  However, start preparing for this step even before the “meet market” mini-interviews in DC. 

Prepare a “job talk” on an issue you’ve been thinking deeply about (and probably writing an article on).  If you are entering the market straight from practice, draw theoretical insights from any practice issues on which you’ve chosen to focus. 

Moot a presentation of about 30 minutes with a friend (one or more law professors if possible).  Be prepared for up to an hour of additional discussion and questioning  Have your friend throw tough questions at you and raise objections to your arguments and conclusions. 

Some faculty members who call to invite you back to campus will try to convince you that “we’re very informal here—it’s nothing serious”. This is a very common approach, sometimes intended to relieve any pre-interview anxiety; he or she may really believe this to be the case.  Do try to relax, but don’t treat the on-campus interview like a mini-vacation.

This brings us back to the need to know the institution.  Some schools pride themselves on being laid-back and informal, while others are more stuffy than a Wall Street law firm on Monday morning.   First, figure out what kind of environment YOU want and are willing to live and work in. 

Then when you arrive, enjoy getting to know people and all the attention, but take the visit seriously.  Yes, people may be walking around in jeans, but they will be listening very closely to what you have to say in both the job talk and in informal settings.  That doesn’t mean you have to turn into someone you’re not—just the person you are when you are in a friendly and collegial interview 

Remember, this interview (and hopefully, a return visit) will be your best opportunity to learn as much about the school’s community as they hope to learn about you.  This is also the time when faculties are on their best behavior; if you are not being treated well at this stage, you will want to consider other options.

Myth #5:  “I don't need anyone's help.”

Get good advice.  I’m inviting Blackprofs to list their top words of wisdom in the comment section below (and one can check out the “Ask Mom” section of Blackprof.com).  The AALS Section on Minority Groups is very active.  There are also several networks among faculty of color, women, clinicians, and progressives as well as networks based on teaching field that can assist in mentoring.  Regional People of Color Legal Scholarship Conferences are held every year (see photo of a few professors of color at a recent Northeast regional conference.).  Check out articles on entering law teaching to get the low-down. Pat Cain’s 2000 annotated bibliography is linked here and the table of contents for a 1991 symposium issue of the Berkeley Women’s Law Journal on Black women in law teaching is linked here.   (I am sure that commentators will list others).

Take full advantage of these resources but, in the end, do listen to that little voice in your head that either sets off alarm bells or tells you when something is right for you.  That voice has helped more than one Blackprof survive and thrive.

 Blackprofs—what do you wish you had known before becoming one?   HL

Recently, several, all white and male, have taken to stopping Yee in the hallway or after class to ask if he made law review while in law school. 

Yee, who is visibly nonwhite, has a string of good law review publications to his credit, served as a clerk to a federal district-court judge, and otherwise stacks up well compared to his faculty colleagues.  But Yee, in fact, was not on his school’s law review, although he did earn excellent grades. 

What should he tell the inquisitive student? 

MOM SAYS.  The student’s question is loaded.  Yee should not answer it lightly; whatever he says is likely to make the rounds.  He should also know that the student asking it probably already knows the answer, having looked Yee’s cv. up on the school’s home page. 

a.  Yee can treat the student’s question as a cry for help.  This is best done with a straight face and a concerned expression.  “Yes, Bill.  That’s an interesting question.  You might not know how to find the bio of a professor or judge.  Do you have a computer?  Well, you just type in the person’s name under Google and see if the name pops out.  If not, try something called the AALS Directory or various collections of judges’ biographies.  The reference librarian can help you, or I can take you to the library someday and show you how.”   

b.  Yee can respond, “No, Bill, I was too busy doing pro bono work.  I gather you are facing a similar dilemma.  Sit down, and we can talk about it.”  In other words, treat the question as a request for career counseling or values clarification. 

c.  Yee can say, “No, I knew I could pick up that stuff on my own” and point to the reprint collection on his bookshelf.  This answer treats law review membership as a remedial exercise, like English Composition 101, and restores the power differential between the two which Bill’s question threatened to reverse. 

d.  Yee can say, in Socratic fashion, “Why do you ask?” 

Please note that Yee should NOT use any of these replies if the questioner is a student of color or woman, or if the questioner is a white male wearing a worried or serious expression.  Then it is likely to be a request for personal advice; the questioner wants to know if serving on the law review is worthwhile compared to other activities he is considering, such as moot court or the legal aid clinic. 

Not every question is an innocent request for information, however.  Expression, context, and manner are everything.  If Yee believes the question is aimed at putting him on the defensive or smoking out whether he is an unqualified “affirmative action baby,” it probably was just that and he should respond accordingly.

JUANITA (fictional name, real person) complains that she is on too many law school and university committees.  Not only that, women and minority faculty at her law school find themselves besieged by requests from community and student groups to serve as advisors, to give keynote speeches, and to help draft amicus briefs and other legal documents.  Their e-mail inbox fills up with prisoners, mental inmates, criminal defendants, conspiracy nuts, and other lost souls asking for their attention and pro bono services.  Last year, the dean asked her to serve on the appointments committee, which took up hundreds of hours of her time; this year, the associate dean has asked her to serve on the admissions committee, which reads vast numbers of student files and discusses them at interminable meetings. Both deans said that the school desperately needed her viewpoint as a woman of color.

Juanita concedes that all this is vital and important work (with the exception of catering to the conspiracy loonies).  But the combined weight of all these obligations is causing her to neglect her teaching and scholarship, and she fears she is headed for a crisis when she comes up for tenure in less than two years.  She says that other women and minority law professors at her school face the same situation.

MOM SAYS that Juanita should attack her predicament frontally by deploying an old tactic—feminist solidarity.  First the women faculty members, then the faculty of color, should make an appointment with the dean and request a clear understanding on the amount of required committee service the school expects.  At the same meeting, they should seek clarification on how much credit they will receive for serving on university committees and doing pro bono work for community organizations such as the NAACP or MALDEF.  They should make known that the law school can solve its problem of injecting the minority viewpoint into its committee structure in two ways—by hiring more women and minority professors, or exploiting the current ones even more, and that the latter alternative is unacceptable for career and mental health reasons.  If they get nowhere with the dean, they should ask the appropriate faculty senate committee to look into the matter and conduct an investigation of committee assignments and equity in workloads. 

Michelle Singletary's Washington Post "The Color of Money" columns do a fabulous job of conveying "Big Mama's" secrets of managing money.  In a recent column, "The Race Savings Gap" here, she comments on a study by two investment firms here that shows that African American's earning more than $50,000/year have not diversified their investments. 

The major findings are that upper middle income African Americans are primarily counting on real estate to live in retirement.  Survey respondents expected to live off of pensions, equity in their homes, or income from investment property.  This is problematic because real estate is one of the least liquid assets and is subject to cycles of decline that can make this a poor choice for being the only vehicle for accumulating enough wealth to pass on to the next generation, with or without being subject to the estate tax. 

The savings retirement gap between African Americans and whites is considerable.  The median saved by whites is $93,000 compared to $59,000 for African Americans.  The survey found that African Americans are decreasing the amount of their stock investments.  The survey takers are both investment firms, one black owned and the other white owned, so they have a direct interest in promoting stock ownership.  Nevertheless, the survey results are a wakeup call for Blackprof readers.

The take away message from this study is that if you want to be an African American whose estate is eligible to be subject to the estate tax, you must diversify your portfolio. This means a smorgasbord of investments including real estate, stocks, mutual funds, cash, business ventures, and reduced consumption.

(By Mom)

Q.  Fernando Jefferson, III (fictitious name, real person), writes that a small but insistent group of students have been giving him a hard time about a number of his classroom rules and procedures, including his testing philosophy, his grading curve, his use of the Socratic method, and even his policy of taking attendance before each class. 

During a recent meeting, one of them angrily refused to accept Fernando's explanation for giving a closed-book final exam.  The student and his study group wanted an open-book exam because "it's less tense" and more like the world of practice, where you can always look things up if you don't know the answer. 

  "We pay your salary," the student concluded, pointing at Fernando's chest.  "You are here to serve us.  And if we don't like the way you teach, we're going to let you know.  And if you don't come around, we're going to tell the Dean." 

A. Mom thinks that Fernando should stick to his guns.  Merely because students pay tuition, they do not have the right to insist that the professor teach them in whatever way they find agreeable.  This "consumer model" rests on a number of fallacies, which Fernando should point out.  Most students, even at private schools, do not pay in the form of tuition the full cost of their legal education, much of which comes from alumni donations and endowment.  In accepting a teaching position rather than a much more high-paid one in the world of practice, Fernando could be seen as contributing to the law school more than any student will pay over three years.

More basically, the relationship between a student and a professor is not like that of a consumer picking out an item at a store.  Instead, it is more like that of a patient and a physician.  A patient cannot insist that a physician treat the patient in any manner that the patient would like.  Medical ethics, medical judgment, and the doctor's need to make time for other patients all enter into the equation.  The same is true of law professors.  We make educational decisions every day that some students are bound to find onerous or even incomprehensible, yet we do it with their long-range benefit in mind.

The law school classroom contains an irreducible element of one-sidedness.  The professor simply knows more than the student does, both about the subject matter of the course and about effective teaching.  One should always consider what students have to say.  But, just as lawyers in the real world sometimes have to tell their clients hard truths about their situation, we sometimes have to do the same with our students.  Fernando should make no apology about this.  The law school expects him to use his best judgment in the classroom, and in the long run his students will respect him for it.