IS "BLACK LAWYER" A MISNOMER?

IS “BLACK LAWYER” A MISNOMER
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.


Given the white supremacist history of the United States of America, as embodied in its constitution, supreme court decisions, customs, and practices, the term “black lawyer,” came to symbolize, the oxymoronic paradox of certain oppressive and repressive objects of American law morphing into those who utilized that same law’s interstices and implements to aid in liberating themselves, and their nation, from its nadir of jurisprudential hypocrisy and state-sponsored or state-sanctioned domestic terrorism, against its former slaves and disfavored persons, into a vaunted modern day exemplar and purported purveyor of human rights, globally.

Black lawyers, historically, were central to this process of transformation. Are they yet such? Is the term “black lawyer” a misnomer? Are black lawyers still the “social engineers” envisioned by the late, great Charles Hamilton Houston, former Dean of the Howard University School of Law?

Or, has that era passed, with the implosion of the mythical doctrine of “separate but equal,” whose utter destruction was Houston’s crowning achievement, albeit posthumously, in the Brown v. Board of Education, et. al. decisions?

Is the war for equality over? Has “victory” been won?

Few and far between are the lawyers of African descent who represent individual civil rights plaintiffs on any level, federal or state, presently, in any kind of case. This is tough work, where the lawyer is unappreciated, if respected by the client, and frequently viewed with enmity by the courts. There are other forms of work, which are far more lucrative and far less stressful.

With the judicial and legislative victories arising from the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960’s, as a tumultuous tailwind, the nation sailed into the 1970’s and 1980’s on the force of yesteryear’s momentum. The goal now became full-fledged and unabashed assimilation into that American mainstream into which blacks had long sought admission.

Black lawyers successfully pursued professional options in so many realms of endeavor, as individuals, there is hardly a field where they are not to be found. Some black lawyers mutated to the point they were able to thrive during, and from, the Ronald Reagan years, well into the Bush years, when racial “quotas” were eliminated (assuming they ever really “existed”) and “Affirmative Action” was vilified and proscribed.

This brings us to the present day, in which the President of the United States, Barack Obama, as well as the Attorney General, Eric Holder, and First Lady, Michele Obama, are black lawyers, all inconceivable “firsts” just a few short years ago.

Latent in this analysis and in this transition has been the capacity of certain black lawyers to eliminate the adjective “black” and to simply be lawyers. For a few, however, “Black Lawyer” remained the proper name and noun. What is true for black lawyers has also been true for black people. Robert Johnson, Oprah Winfrey and many other wealthy persons in business and entertainment, even in the realm of religion, exemplify this capacity daily.

All civil rights are necessarily individual and personal. One cannot speak for another, neither should one suffer for the conduct of another, nor be rewarded for the work of another. Group-think, group-speak, group-act alternate between beneficial and detrimental, dependent upon prevailing circumstances. Right now, what appears to be most conducive to “the advancement of colored people” is self-assertion as individuals poised and prepared for productivity. Adjectives are by definition modifiers of nouns. “Expressio unius est exclusio alterius,” goes the Latin maxim, which means to state one thing is to exclude another. Why limit one’s self, when the goal as always been to free one’s self?

“Black” like “White” are states of mind, yes. But, more so, these social constructs were meant to predetermine and to manipulate conduct and decision making over and in one’s life. It is a form of mental programming, reinforced by the reward and retribution dichotomy imposed and enforced by law, custom, and heritable values. Both blacks and whites are and/or have been afflicted by its pervasive power. But, now its day has passed. Objective conditions have changed, so the myth cannot be maintained.

Stated directly, in the absence of a rubric known as “black law,” there cannot be black lawyers. In the absence of a rubric known as “white law,” there cannot be white lawyers. There can only be lawyers.

So, yes, “black lawyer” (and “white lawyer”) are misnomers. There are only lawyers, just like there is only law.

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