Learning the White Man's Law

"A black law student is a strange animal," says Norbert Simmons, a Negro in his first year at Boston University Law School. "He has to learn to use the very things that have been used against him. It's a tremendous strain to go completely establishmentarian for three years." As one result, many of the most promising black students drop out before earning their degrees.

Too few are taking their places--not only for lack of money, but also because young Negroes commonly distrust the law in practice. Many see it in terms of white police and white judges using white law against blacks. The upshot is that only 2% of U.S. lawyers are black. They number about 3,000, and most of them work in Northern cities. In Mississippi, for example, where Negroes represent more than 42% of the state's population, there are only 17 black lawyers.

Elusive Faith. In recent years, the nation's top law schools have made a determined effort to recruit more Negro students. They have awarded larger scholarships, given black applicants special tutoring to make up for deficiencies, and even, at times, lowered admission standards. But though schools such as Rutgers and Columbia have managed to increase their black enrollments tenfold in less than a decade, the U.S. still has only about 1,280 Negro law students, one-fourth of them at predominantly black Howard University.

Many law professors agree with Dean Robert McKay of New York University that training more black lawyers is one way of "building faith in the law as a neutral force that handles all people alike." Even on liberal campuses, however, the blacks are becoming increasingly restless, angry and isolated. Often they complain of inadequate financial resources. They deplore the fact that almost all of their teachers are whites. Many also charge that the curriculum and atmosphere are distinctly oriented toward the white middle class--and that many faculty members are totally insensitive to black aspirations.

Sensitivity Sessions. At the University of Michigan in November, the Black Law Students' Alliance demanded that the law school "show cause" why it should not be found guilty of racism. At a mock hearing, the students called black residents of Ann Arbor who testified to the need for more black attorneys in their community. One reason why the 38 blacks at the school were furious was Michigan's decision to drop a course on race law and another on labor relations and race. They were further annoyed when Dean Francis Allen, whom they call "Bwana," refused to attend the hearing on the ground that it did not promise to produce rational discussion of the issues.

Yale's black law students charge that university police ask them to show their identification cards on campus, but never stop whites for the same purpose. In protest, a group of blacks marched through the classrooms one day chanting, "Stop the cops." After the school threatened four of the demonstrators with discipline, white students joined in a one-day boycott of their classes. "People talk about the need for sensitivity sessions for police," says Yale Law Student J. Otis Cochran, who heads the National Black American Law Students Association. "Hell, law faculties need sensitivity sessions too."

Troubling Dilemma. In fact, law schools are now offering a number of courses on welfare and consumer law, and on other special concerns of the poor. Still, Negroes like Calvin Johnson, who attends Stanford Law School, criticize the traditional law curriculum. "How many blacks," he asks, "have worries about taxes, estates or corporation law?" David Mitchell, a black at Columbia Law School, disagrees. He argues that courses in corporate and tax law are "as relevant to black businessmen as to white." Moreover, he declares, "you can't know landlord-tenant problems without understanding the principles of property."

The blacks are highly sensitive about special treatment, though many of them do need and get unusual consideration. The University of Chicago normally requires an applicant to score at least 650 (out of a possible 800) on his law-school aptitude test; but a few blacks have been admitted with scores as low as 420. Stanford allows some low-scoring blacks to earn law degrees in four years instead of the usual three. When several minority-group students and a few whites failed to achieve a passing average of 64 in their first year at U.C.L.A. Law School, the faculty lowered the minimum to 62 for all first-year students --to allow blacks and Chicanos to remain in school on probation.

Torn between seeking law degrees as tickets to success in the white world and proving that they care primarily about the ghetto's submerged people, black students are troubling law schools more and more. Yet more and more professors, like Yale's Law Dean Louis Pollak, see that trouble as a challenge. "The law school is an angrier place now," says Pollak, "but it is performing a more honest role and, professionally, a more fulfilling one."

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