CHRLP Forum Reading Group: Are Law Classrooms White Spaces? A US Perspective

Inspired by the fabled meeting place in ancient Rome, the CHRLP Forum Reading Group on Power, Mobilization, and Change, which is founded on the principles of inclusive citizenship and deliberative democracy.

This teach-in session will be moderated by Professor Darren Rosenblum, and facilitated by Professor Omar Farahat. Speakers will also include BCL/JD students Fanta Ly, Co-President, Black Law Students Association of McGill (BLSAM), and de Hulya Miclisse-Polat, Vice-President (BLSAM).

Description and readings

This session will explore legal pedagogy and race. As a soon-to-be McGill professor (starting in Fall 2021), I [Darren Rosenblum] hope to learn from this conversation as well as share my (mostly U.S.) perspectives. My research draws on critical gender theory and on Critical Race Theory to understand diversification in corporate governance. My goal is to listen to students and discuss questions with which I have been engaged in the United States on pedagogy and race in the law classroom.

We will discuss how professors and students can make law school classrooms into inclusive and even supportive spaces for engagement around the racialized aspects of the law.

We will share three readings, one of which is suggested background.

• Patricia Williams, The Alchemy of Race & Rights (1991) (read excerpt until p.153) This work is available through the McGill Library via the HathiTrust, or though Handle.net.
• Williams v. Walker-Thomas Furniture (D.C. Cir., 1965)
• Adelle Blackett, Follow the Drinking Gourd: Our Road to teaching Critical Race Theory and Slavery and the Law, Contemplatively, at McGill (2017) (suggested)

The session will proceed as follows:

1. Introduction (5 mins)
2. Mini-conversation: Does the absence of discussion of race make classrooms, courses, or the entire school a “white space”? If so, how? (10 mins)
3. Reading analysis: Discussion of Patricia Williams, Alchemy of Race & Rights excerpt. Read to p.153. (15 mins)
   1. Questions:
      1. What is her thesis and method?
      2. Is this piece still novel?
      3. Would one write it differently in 2020 than it was written in 1991?
4. How can faculty best bring questions of race into legal pedagogy? (30 mins)
   1. Is it by adding explicit primary (cases/statutes) or secondary (scholarship) material to the subject – i.e. articles about race in property, for example? (e.g., Patricia Williams, Alchemy of Race and Rights)? Where? In special courses? Required courses?
   2. Is it by adding time (and space) to discuss implicit racialized material (designated by the professor) within canonical materials (primary or secondary)? (e.g., Williams v. Walker Thomas Furniture)
   3. Would it suffice to set aside time in each course to pose questions about how race relates to particular doctrinal debates?
5. What are the particularities of the role/responsibility of white faculty or faculty of colour, or for white students and students of colour? (15 mins)
6. Conclusion (5 mins)

The Forum reading group aspires to create a space for learning from the past, deliberating about the present, and building a common future together. To find out more, see our invitation to join the Forum and how to organize readings.