We are not, nor have we ever been, a color-blind or gender-blind society, despite claims made to the contrary. In this country, there are identifiable groups of people who have been, in actuality, historically discriminated against, and where effects extending from such discrimination continue to oppress those groups.

In the name of equalizing opportunity for groups affected by discrimination, using color-blind politics cannot be effective because it fails to name and effectively ignores the very problem it seeks to alleviate in a fatally contradictory fashion. Equality of opportunity becomes abstracted from its goal - what is it that we seek to equalize if we are blind to it? It becomes a disease with no name and no cure that festers silently beneath the skin, but because we cannot see it, we cannot be accountable for its effects.

We cannot transcend oppressive and hegemonic practices by simply ignoring that such issues exist or by pretending that they have been neutralized. To remedy these societal ills, to equalize opportunity, and to help each other understand how some have benefited and others have suffered because of their daily interactions with poverty, racism, sexism, and classism – those – isms that have had irreparable impact on their communities - we have in place this system of, this commitment to diversifying ourselves.

While writing this speech, I had to reflect on what diversity meant to me and to larger society. It seems that, diversity promises much on its face. It promises to benefit and enrich all by having an amalgam of experiences, ones informed by our cultures, races, ethnicities, genders, centralized in one location.

Diversity is taking our identifiable differences and translating our experiences with those differences to a broader community. Diversity is a means of re-conceptualizing those same differences and using it to facilitate greater understanding and knowledge of each other in a way that we were not able to do previously because of the scourge of bias and prejudice.

Particularly in the public interest sector, it is important for any number of reasons to have a diverse team of attorneys, because many of the clients that we serve stand at the intersections of race, gender, and class in ways that relegate them to the bottom of the social hierarchy. In recognizing that our clients are heterogeneous, diversity in the law allows us to cut across barriers that have been put in place as a result of historical prejudices.

Diversity is recognizing the value of group identity, the value of community, the value of multiple cultures and ethnicities, and what we can learn from each other as a result of our multiplicities. For me, diversity has given me access and opportunity of a different sort then that we typically think of for our clients.

I recognize that I am here because someone decided that faces like my own were rare in this field, but that these faces are vital and necessary because people who look like me and identify as I do have a particular insight into the social ills plaguing the community with which I identify. It is the hope that with my foreknowledge, I will dedicate myself to resolving issues in my community in a way that perhaps someone else who is detached from my experiences would not otherwise do.

Diversity also provides the opportunity for those who have been historically invisible to be seen – for example, more females and people of color in professional careers gives children something to aspire to when they see that it is a possibility, a reality to be a successful professional of color, or when they see that women can be doctors, lawyers, scientists too. This is how I have come to conceptualize diversity.

However, I believe that diversity is not enough. While making the decision to commit to diversity, we should, at the same time, be making a conscious choice to attempt to transcend our social constructions, our prejudices, and our biases. We should be recognizing these social constructs for what they are - mere inventions used as a means to further separate us - and we should be giving them less qualification so that we may see each other’s commonalities as human beings, our commonalities in our human experiences, finding those truths agreed upon, recognizing that we all see the same sun and moon and stars each evening, even if we see it from different vantage points and sets of eyes.

Diversity should not be empty rhetoric used to fulfill quotas, used as a business tactic, nor used to give an image of sensitivity to race relations. Diversity should instead be used as a vehicle to discover the ways that we are similar in spite of our differences, a vehicle to find common ground in the face of those differences.

Too often, to speak of diversity is to speak of the ways in which someone’s very personal experiences of being Black, of being poor, of being female can contribute to their career, and while these experiences are very real for the individual and will effect how they do their job, I believe we stop short of asking why it is okay in the first place to use someone’s race or gender as a way to diversify, as though their race and gender determines what they have to offer or what they can bring to the table. Being Black alone doesn’t define me, it merely contributes to how I experience my life in the larger world. But for the color of my skin, would my experiences be so much different than someone who is not black?

Too often we take these social constructions and we use it as a qualifier to come to conclusions about who we are as individuals, when we should be moving beyond that to understand the ways in which we are humans outside of our social constructions. Therefore, it is my personal hope that diversity is merely a starting point, that it is used to open up the sort of dialogue that will bridge the gap of differences.

Diversity philosophy should be embraced in full - it is not simply enough to give the appearance of diversity by adding color to your office, but we must take diversity and consciously use whatever differences we have to teach others, communicate with each other, and gain empathy and understanding for each other. We are not hiring this man or woman because they fit into a diversity prototype, we are not pairing this client with this lawyer because they are of the same race and only that lawyer can empathize with that client. We are doing it because that lawyer can extract from themselves the qualities that give them their humanity, using it to inform their practice and to connect with the humanity within others.

Whether we be sheathed in white skin, black skin, brown skin, red skin, it is still our duty, as a part of our humanity, as a part of our accepting our positions as social engineers and gatekeepers, to ensure that access to a justice system that we uphold and protect is not afforded to some and denied to others merely on the basis of characteristics beyond their control.

I would like to end with a quote that I find particularly applicable to the topic of discussion here today - “We declare our right on this earth to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary” spoken by Malcolm X.

The preceding was presented by Rasheedah Phillips as introductory remarks at the Pennsylvania Legal Aid Network, Inc. Second Annual Diversity Summit on October 23, 2007. Click here to view a video of the remarks.

Rasheedah Phillips is a student at the Temple University School of Law and a Martin Luther King Jr. Summer Intern (2007) and Fellow (2008-2010) with the Pennsylvania Legal Aid Network, Inc. Click here to contact Ms. Phillips.

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