What does a law professor look like? I have often asked this question of myself, especially when confronted with professed disbelief that I could be a legal academic. What does a law professor look like? I have often asked this question of myself, especially when confronted with professed disbelief that I could be a legal academic.
“But you don’t look like a law professor!”
At times I too participate in the aesthetic deception, avoiding disclosure of my employment from others. Discovery of my interest in family law and estates has triggered one too many unsolicited “story hours” about someone’s friend’s uncle’s girlfriend’s father in Terre Haute. It is then when I am thankful that I look like I belong more in a band than on a panel.
Is this a function of age? (I am thirty-five.) Of deportment? (I exercise regularly.) Of hair? (I have locs, not a toupee.) Or is it a combination of these things, with the crowning influence of race?
I had a middle-aged woman at an airport flat out tell me that I was lying. And yet another insisted that I was the “creative type.” I suppose that writing and contemplation of legal problems counts as creativity. And numerous others have confessed that they never would have guess me to be a law professor. Frankly, I find it intensely annoying.
“Like a real professor? With tenure and all that?”
Track. Tenure, that is. This is where questioning gets sticky. Even my own friends reserve the realm of law-professorship for people older (and presumably whiter) than myself. People can believe that I could teach a class or two, attend a conference here and there, or even sit on a committee. Adjuncting is possible. But venturing into the realm of full-fledged academia is a stretch.
Statistically, the population of black law professors is small. In 2006, 716 persons out of 8014 identified themselves as black to the American Association of Law Schools, an increase from 484 in 1992. That’s an increase of approximately 16 people nationwide per year. These numbers indicate that diversification of law school faculties largely occurs from within the academy, rather than the recruitment of new professors from outside.
But most, if not all professors of African descent have experienced racial profiling. Eminent historian John Hope Franklin has been mistaken as a valet parking attendant. A friend of mine was assumed to be a nanny for the fair-skinned child she was holding—her own. And I myself have been assumed to be a mugger.
Of course, we can take these examples of misidentification with a grain of salt. Perhaps Franklin stood by a podium at the front door of the hotel where people drop off their cars. Or maybe I was walking down the street too close to the woman in front of me. Or my friend was wearing a nanny’s smock. These assumptions based on appearance could occur for a myriad of reasons when the seer possesses no acquaintance with the professor. I would be amazed if the frightened woman on the street had turned around and said, “Oh, you scared me! I thought you were going to mug me, but I feel safe now because you must be a Scholar!” Probably not.
But for those situations where another person disbelieves the professions of the professor, the profiling takes on another color. In this misappropriation of employment and identity, the disbelieved person faces a racial barrier that excludes her (and her kind) from a collective image of The Academy. At the same time, it is a reminder of the minority scholar’s anomalous status.
These interactions are never confrontational. They are most likely unintentional. And most likely, the person “didn’t mean anything.” Furthermore, they do not affect the scholar’s tenure or other types of job security. Additionally, the interrogator might argue that they meant it as a compliment. You don’t look like a law professor!
But why should a black law professor have to convince (however briefly) someone else of their gainful employment? That fleeting moment of disbelief, however harmless, only demonstrates the persistent perception of the legal academy as the exclusive province of middle-aged white men. For another person to incite a reaffirmation of my position requires me to adopt the Popeyesque psychology of “I am what I am.” This is a rebuttable presumption black law professors, both men and women, should not have to face.
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