For my contribution to this special issue of the Minnesota Law Review, I will attempt to situate the problem of black underrepresentation at America’s law schools within the broader context of racial hierarchy in American society. The former has generated an extensive body of legal scholarship and commentary, centering primarily on the racial impact of law schools’ admissions criteria and procedures, particularly the substantial weight placed upon the Law School Admissions Test (“LSAT”). This focus is understandable: given the substantial racial disparities in LSAT performance and the test’s relatively limited value in predicting academic and professional outcomes, it makes sense that efforts to increase black representation in law school would start here.
But in focusing primarily on the inequities of law school admissions, the existing discourse to some extent has unduly isolated the issue of black law school underrepresentation from the broader context of American racial inequality. The law school admissions process is but the final stage in a long chain of events that determines whether an individual becomes a law student. The vast majority of black students effectively are prevented from attending law school by conditions that they encounter before they even apply.
Accordingly, in this article I offer a broader account of the underrepresentation of black law students, one that focuses on the conditions of entrenched racial hierarchy that impede black Americans’ educational trajectories and limit their mobility into high-status occupations, including the practice of law. This entrenched hierarchy has three core, distinct, though related, components that each contribute to the underrepresentation of black law students: stark racial socioeconomic disparities, the pernicious racial stigma that subjects black Americans to various anti-black prejudices and stereotypes, and enduring patterns of racial segregation. Collectively, these conditions subject many black children to an onslaught of deprivations, disadvantages, and discrimination that work to divert them away from professional careers from the very outset of their educational careers. By the time law schools review students’ applications, entrenched racial hierarchy has produced staggering educational disparities that all but ensure that black Americans will be underrepresented among law students.
The resultant struggle to secure sufficient numbers of academically well-prepared black law students who are likely to thrive will persist indefinitely in the absence of more far-reaching, holistic interventions.
This article will proceed in three parts. Part I introduces the three core components of racial hierarchy in America, each of which deprives black people of equal opportunities and treatment. Part II explains how these conditions diminish the potential pipeline of black attorneys by generating educational disparities at every stage of students’ academic careers, from early childhood through college. Building upon this analysis, Part III identifies some approaches through which a variety of institutions, including law schools, might better enable more black Americans to enter the legal profession.