1. Have We Reached the Promised Land? Diversifying Law Faculties Debra L. Green Presented at University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law
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8. Unconscious Bias as the Root Cause of Slow Progress? Psychologists once believed that only bigoted people used stereotypes. Now the study of unconscious bias is revealing the unsettling truth: We all use stereotypes, all the time, without knowing it. We have met the enemy of equality, and the enemy is us . article from Psychology Today
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16. Strategies for Counteracting Unconscious Bias The first step to recovery is acknowledgment. Alcoholics Anonymous
Trends with doctrinal professors: 1. Absolute numbers as well as the proportion of minority law professors hired decreased in 1996-1997 from 1990-1991. In the first cohort (1990-1991), 125 minority professors were hired, about 30% of the new tenure-track law professors, while in the second cohort (1996-1997), there were only 47 minorities, less than 25% of those hired. In effect minority candidates for faculty positions bore a disproportionate share of the decrease in hiring slots, since their proportion as well as their absolute numbers decreased.” (Report of AALS Committee on Recruitment and Retention of Minority Law Teachers) White women law faculty teaching doctrinal courses : “The gender gap in tenure rates among white professors is diminishing significantly. . . The data show a marked improvement in the tenure rate of women, as compared to men over time.” While the data for the 1990-1991 cohort showed a statistically significant gap with gender in terms of tenure rates, “for the 1996-97 cohort, seven year data shows the gender gap virtually disappearing, with white men being tenured at only a two percent higher rate than white women. Over time, then, the gender gap in rates of promotion to tenure appears to be closing.” With faculty of color in doctrinal courses : Numbers hired overall Promotion and tenure rates : According to the report, “The racial gap in tenure rates has increased to distressing proportions.” Among those hired in the 1990-91 cohort, “74% of law professors were awarded tenure by year seven, as compared to 60% of people of color.” For the later cohort, 73% of white law professors received tenure by year eight, while only 47% of people of color received tenure.
We appear to be doing at least as good a job as our doctrinal colleagues when it comes to overall hiring, but that doesn’t appear to be the case when it comes to directors’ positions. With clinicians: “Although by 1998-99, virtually every ABA accredited law school had some course known as a ‘clinic’ and thus some clinical faculty, 110 (69%) of all law schools have no clinicians of color on the faculty, 41 (25.5%) have only one, and only 9 (5.5%) have reported more than one clinicians of color. Thus, while one might debate the significance of the progress and continuous movement toward diversity in clinical legal education, one cannot serius suggest that we have even minimally transcended basic diversity access issues when nearly 70% of all law schools still have no clinicians of color.” 51 Hastings L.J. 445, 450-51. “ Preliminary data on the second generatoin issues of advancement, job security, and pay reflect disparities, particularly with respect to women of color. For example, only approximately 7 of the 159 (4.5%) clinical directors outside of the minority operated law schools are persons of color. While it might be premature to ascribe an impenetrable ‘glass ceiling’ designation to the racial disparity on advancement into these directorship positions, these figures are significant since clinical directors often set clinical policy and prerogatives, make curricular decisions, assign workload responsibilities, and determine or substantially influence clinical hiring and retention decisions. They also typically enjoy greater compensation and perquisites than other clinical faculty.” 51 Hastings L.J. 445, 451.
Go to the clip from CRASH here
Tests are often subliminal and measure how people react to stimuli when not consciously aware
John Bargh, social psychologist at NYU conducted a study to measure whether stereotypes could be triggered by a slight interaction or encounter. “An experiment conducted by Bargh required a group of white participants to perform a tedious computer task. While performing the task, some of the participants were subliminally exposted to pictures of African Americans with neutral expressions. When the subjects were then asked to do the task over again, the ones who had been exposed to the faces reacted with more hostility to the request—because, Bargh believes, they were responding in kind to the hostility which is part of the African American stereotype.”
Richard Delgado article saying that to be a good role model, one must assimilate.
Current literature Mainly addresses women in LRW and status issues related to lower pay Very limited work addresses clinicians of color, and it doesn’t address squarely unconscious bias No work addresses people of color in LRW, a phenomenon that has occurred only over the last 12 years