De novo review: Professor Brant T. Lee on teaching the law's racial history
2022 CIVILRBRF 0039
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By Kteba Dunlap, Esq.
WESTLAW TODAY Civil Rights Briefing
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March 11, 2022
(March 11, 2022) - Kteba Dunlap, Meera Gajjar and Josh Numainville, three Westlaw Today reporters with different backgrounds and law school experiences, are taking a closer look at the intersection of race and law in U.S. history by participating in the University of Akron School of Law's free, online course Racial Equality and the Law, taught by professor Brant T. Lee.
This week we bring you an interview with Lee, University of Akron assistant dean and professor of law, who attended the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School.
After graduating, he worked as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee and eventually entered academia. He has made the impact of race on the development of public policy and the American legal system the focus of his work for more than 25 years. In the fall of 2020, he began teaching the free, online course Racial Equality and the Law, which he taught again in 2021.
The De novo review team and Lee discussed the impact of teaching racial history, the responses to it and how the conversation around race has changed in recent years. The following responses have been edited for brevity and clarity.
De novo review: How did you get involved in this work?
Brant Lee: I started as an advocate for more people knowing about Asian-Americans as a different group. I worked in Washington on policy issues. Moving to the University of Akron made a big difference. My perspective shifted. To me the narrative about race and the policies that have shifted because of it is all about the Black-white narrative.
The structure it sets up is that whiteness creates itself in opposition to Blackness, and it creates itself with certain characteristics because of that. And then they bring those same characteristics to their thinking about Asians or Native Americans and other minorities.
The move was demanded by what our history actually looks like.
DNR: What were your intentions when you created this course, and who is the intended audience?
BL: It was always intended for a very broad audience. I'm trying to talk about the subject to people who have vastly different levels of exposure to different materials. I have to be gentle for people for whom talking frankly about race is going to be new, but also not pull any punches. I tried to bring it down to the audience as a simple, step-by-step process.
My main goal in my race work is to move people out of this idea that only individual racism causes harm. When people say there's no systemic racism, I think they mean they only define racism as intentional.
Systemic racism doesn't mean everyone in the system is racist. I want to help people understand how there's so much involved in advantaging or disadvantaging people in their lives, in our whole history. I'm trying to connect the dots: This past thing happened and you know about it. This isn't right.
For example, people know that Black people weren't voting all the way up until the 60s. That would have had an influence on all the legislation that established the world we live in. It's not a huge leap. It's just that they have blinders on.
DNR: How do you measure the success of the course? How do you know it's working?
BL: Maybe the most straightforward thing we do is surveys, but I have also gotten a lot of really positive feedback from people who will say, "I've never heard this presented this way." The second year a lot of people said, "Oh, I've heard about this," which is a kind of indirect measure. A fair number of them were repeats who wanted to hear it again.
DNR: What kind of responses have you gotten from different sectors?
BL: In the aftermath of the summer of 2020, skeptics that said there's no such thing as systemic racism were on their heels. And it seemed like the whole world was on the bandwagon of racial justice and every organization was issuing statements.
This last summer there's been a little bit of space, and I feel like people who are more skeptical got their wind back, saying, "I don't believe this." In the online discussions for the class, I saw more of that.
There were people who were not really engaging with the course material. You can tell because they bring a set pattern of responses for arguments they expect to hear, but they're not really responding to the material as presented.
DNR: What are some of the more surprising reactions you've gotten?
BL: I've had white people come to me asking why they hadn't ever heard any of this before, saying it is changing the whole way they look at things. All the things I'm reporting are things other people have written about, and some of them aren't new books. It showed how the information hasn't gotten a lot of traction with a general audience.
DNR: Have you seen the attitudes shift over the last 20 or so years?
BL: I've been teaching for 25 years now. At first, trying to get anyone to listen to me was the project. Right now, even though it has calmed down a little bit since 2020, there's still a really heightened amount of attention. I used to feel like it was just minorities and few allies complaining. Now there's also — not the majority — but some large segment of white people. I am so swamped with requests to speak.
I think the backlash against critical race theory is a weird artifact. They've already lost that war in education and in the books people are publishing. The whole culture of celebrating diversity is really strong.
DNR: How do you balance presenting distressing information and trying to make an impact with a vision of hope?
BL: One of the consequences of studying just how deeply ingrained racial inequity is in every system is knowing how hard it is to fix. You have to give people enough information to understand the depth and complexity. It was never realistic to think that overnight we were going to have integrated schools because nine people in Washington decided so.
DNR: What would a more hopeful version of the class look like?
BL: I'm going about as light as I can go. I could be showing you pictures of lynchings and trying to really hammer it in. My style is to combine a cheerful countenance with delivery of hard facts. If people feel bad about the information, that is something they should try to resolve for themselves.
By Kteba Dunlap, Esq.
Kteba Dunlap, Meera Gajjar and Josh Numainville cover legal news for Westlaw Today. Dunlap graduated from Tulane Law School in New Orleans. As a Black woman raised in Atlanta and the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., she never stops evaluating her place in America and how it is affected by the country's history and the myriad perspectives of its citizens. Gajjar earned her J.D. from Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon. As a child of Indian immigrants, she is still figuring out how she fits into the country's journey from slavery to equality. Numainville received his J.D. from Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota. As a white male who grew up in a Midwest suburb, he is still confronting his own blind spots about race, U.S. history and the legal system. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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