My earliest memories are of family road trips to see my grandparents in the South. We would drive from upstate New York to my mother鈥檚 hometown, Rock Hill, South Carolina. My grandfather owned a service station in town, and we would stop there on the way into town. My grandfather, smiling, covered in grease, would walk out of his service station to swiftly produce my favorite soda from the station鈥檚 vending machine鈥攁 Mello Yellow.
I later learned that wasn鈥檛 the original location of my grandfather鈥檚 service station. For nearly 30 years, he owned a different service station right off the highway in a bustling Black business district called Black Street. But "redevelopment" and the laws that came with it uprooted this thriving district and displaced the Black business owners and residents so white developers could move in.
Gentrification under the guise of community improvement forced my grandfather and his fellow business owners off the main roads into less lucrative locations where their businesses never financially recovered. Rock Hill has since acknowledged this injustice and erected a monument in honor of the displaced community, including a photo of my grandfather.
I have directly experienced racism in many ways. But systemic racism is a special kind of beast. It is often cloaked with a well-meaning veneer鈥攁ppearing to be race-neutral or colorblind. It is often promulgated by well-intentioned people who point to things like public safety or community vitality as a justification. But a common denominator for the misguided decisions that have led to unfair systems is the lack of stakeholder inclusivity and equity at the decisionmaking table. The very people with a stake in these decisions are not in the room, or they are and their voices carry no weight. Imagine if the business owners of Black Street were at the table and had a say regarding the "redevelopment?"
The greatest evidence of systemic racism鈥檚 travesty of justice relates to policing, our criminal justice system, and the mass incarceration of Black men. The first time I set foot in a 欧美口爆视频 courthouse, I was a 1L at 欧美口爆视频. I recall touring the courthouse, visiting various courtrooms and judges鈥� chambers. But I will never forget the fifth floor, where all the jailed people waited to be led, shackled, down hallways to court appearances. That day, in the Denver courthouse, I was confronted with the old-fashioned jail cells, packed with faces of color. I looked down the hallway of that holding cell area. Both sides were lined several people deep with Brown and Black men looking back at me. The images of the inside of a slave ship were eerily similar. That was 2007.
The injustices at Black Street and of mass incarceration are not demonstrative of a broken system. They are of a system that did, and continues to do, what it was designed to do. Whether the architects of this system intended these results is debatable. What is not in controversy is that the communities these systems harm were not in the room in a meaningful way when they were created. Calls to action to address systematic racism and inequality are the loudest I have witnessed in my lifetime. George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter signs lining my street鈥攐ur society is focused on addressing the challenges and opportunities this moment demands. Lawyers are uniquely situated to change our systems. We will undoubtedly be in rooms and at tables where decisions are made that can make our society a better, more inclusive, and equitable place. Will we be inclusive of all the people these decisions affect? Will we advocate for their voices to be heard? I hope history will say our answer was yes. It is time for lawyers to cross the threshold of just being not racist to now being against racism. To not just talk and strategize, but to act boldly as allies and leaders.
My oldest son is 5 and has been asking about his skin color. I struggle with how to eventually tell him we were captured, enslaved, and tortured for 300 years, and that some people just hate us, as I will inevitably have to. But I find myself excited and proud to tell him about generations of our family who have stood strong in the face of oppression to improve our collective condition. As I struggle to respond, I wonder what he will tell his sons?
A. Tyrone Glover (鈥�09) is a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer in Denver, 欧美口爆视频.