I was humbled to be the Guest Editor of the Verdict magazine’s Fall 2021 issue published by the Trial Lawyers Association of British Columbia (TLABC) (Canada). The theme of the issue was Racism and White Privilege in the Law.
The editorial I wrote was entitled: “A Legal Reckoning: Challenging Systemic Racism and White Privilege in the Law”.
A few excerpts:
“As lawyers, judges, members of the legal profession, we are tasked and entrusted with upholding justice, fairness, and the rule of law. But these notions are fraught within in a legal system originally built on advancing the colonial enterprise and which have continued to create a legal foundation to benefit those privileged with rights and those systematically denied legal rights. The attainment of substantive equality remains illusive to BIPOC communities.
We are at a moment in time when a legal reckoning must occur.
As the police, RCMP and military systems are being forced to hold a mirror to their procedures, policies, and climates that permit systemic racism, (amongst many other oppressions, such as sexism, homophobia, etc.) so too must the legal system face inward and have serious conversations and take action about the manner in which legal institutions are creating more trauma, more damage, more harm and more racial injustice.”
AND
“It has been an exhausting, overwhelming and traumatic time for many Indigenous, Black, and racialized lawyers of colour and communities; and yet for most, the events of this year and the past year are not new to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) lawyers. Navigating the challenges of racism, colonization and white privilege in the legal system and practice of law are not new.
As more unmarked graves are found of Indigenous children at former residential schools, as more stories of racial profiling and deaths of BIPOC people occurring at the hands of police/RCMP are reported, as accounts of Islamophobia, anti-Asian hate crimes, increase, as more resignations and challenges to Indigenous and racialized leaders in politics and law and attacks to critical race theory education in Canada and across the borders abound – there is a clear constellation, a clear critical mass that is demanding our attention.”
