Toward a Race-Conscious Pedagogy in Legal Education

FOREWORD: TOWARD A RACE-CONSCIOUS PEDAGOGY IN LEGAL EDUCATION Kimberl6 Williams Crenshaw* It is both an honor and a pleasure to write the Foreword for this issue of the NATIONAL BLACK LAW JOURNAL. This project represents the culmina- tion of a joint effort involving the NBLJ, Dean Susan Westerberg Prager and me. The project grew out of discussions that began in the Spring of 1987 in which we explored various ways that the law school could support the produc- tion of publishable student material for the Journal. I initially considered sponsoring interested students in independent research projects; however, a high level of student interest, an obvious overlap between proposed student topics, and my own interest in developing alternative pedagogical strategies combined to make a seminar the most attractive option. After receiving suggested themes for the proposed issue from Journal members, I attempted to develop a seminar that would reflect our substantive interests and that would also be responsive to some of the problems that I believe confront minority students in traditional classrooms. The seminar that resulted– Minority Voting Rights and Majoritarian Domination -reflected an effort to further three interrelated objectives: 1) to explore the successes and failures of the legal strategies developed to address political disen- franchisement on the basis of race; 2) to create an environment that presented an alternative to the traditional classroom experiences of minority students in majority-centered law schools; and 3) to provide a support structure specifi- cally designed to produce publishable student material. In this Foreword, I will sketch my own view of some of the difficulties confronting minorities in the classroom and explain how the seminar was developed to address them. These views are impressions based on recollections and experiences that I have gathered from observing classroom dynamics from both sides of the law school podium. Although none of these ideas are based on empirical research, I hope nonetheless that they provide a basis for interpreting the seminar and that they may perhaps offer some ideas for further discussion. RACE IN THE LAW SCHOOL CLASSROOM Minority students across the country have waged a series of protests to draw attention to problems of diversity in the nation’s law schools. 1 Although * Acting Professor of Law, University of California, Los Angeles, B.A., Cornell University, 1981; J.D., Harvard Law School, 1984; L.L.M., University of Wisconsin, 1985. I am grateful to several friends and colleagues who offered helpful comments on earlier drafts of this Foreword.