We’ve Got A Long Way to Go
Systemic Racist Keeps Going
It’s not something liberals want to recognize, but more than 60 percent of people incarcerated in federal prisons in the United States are people of color but in the 232 year history of the most powerful federal judicial district in the nation, there has never been a person of color in charge, until now.
And since it formed in 1871, the Western District of North Carolina also has never had a person of color in charge. That too, is likely to change.
Likewise, there has never been an African American woman leading the 221-year-old Western District of New York, which handles federal criminal and civil cases in the 17 westernmost counties of the state out of courthouses in Buffalo and Rochester. And it too is about to change, for the better, though terribly too slowly.
The U.S. Justice Department consists of 94 districts which are led by U.S. Attorneys, all appointed by the President, and they prosecute all kinds of major federal crimes. And change is coming, slowly, but it is coming.
Last week, the Senate approved President Joe Biden’s nominee, Damian Williams, 41, to be the next U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, following in the footsteps of future white judges, senators, cabinet members and former New York City Mayor, Rudy Giuliani. The appointment would make Mr. Williams the most powerful federal law enforcement official in Manhattan. And he would stand out in his office as of the 232 assistant U.S. attorneys and executives, only seven, including Williams, are African American.
In September, Biden nominated Dena King, a graduate of South Mecklenburg High School, N.C., to become U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, a criminal justice system that goes from metropolitan Charlotte to the Tennessee line. And Trini Ross was nominated an has been approved to be the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York, which handles federal criminal and civil cases in the 17 westernmost counties of the state out of courthouses in Buffalo and Rochester. Ross. a veteran federal prosecutor, is the first African American woman to lead the district.
People of color are rare in high office. Vice President Kamala Harris is the first woman of color to hold the office and she also was the attorney general of California. Eric H. Holder Jr., was the nation’s first African American attorney general, and served as the D.C. District’s U.S. attorney in the mid-1990s.
In the shadow of the murder of George Floyd by a Minnesota police officer, there has been increasing focus on racism in the criminal justice system. Why are there so few people of color serving in the federal judicial system? It is because of blatant, systemic racism at its worst.
The Southern District has some of the nation’s highest profile cases from complex fraud, terrorism and corruption cases, including prosecutions of former President Donald J. Trump’s inner circle. The office is preparing to try Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime companion to Jeffrey Epstein, on sex-trafficking charges and it is investigating Giuliani, a Trump lawyer and onetime Southern District U.S. attorney, over his dealings in Ukraine before the 2020 presidential election.
The lady of justice may be blind but people of color are disproportionately represented. Brandon Gaille, who is the CEO at RankIQ.com, reported that in 2014, there were 1.3 million licensed lawyers practicing in the United States. Of the total, 88 percent come from a White/Caucasian background while just 4 percent of practicing lawyers in the United States are African-American/Black. Latinos make up 3.7 percent of practicing lawyers and Asian-Pacific Americans make up an almost equal percentage at 3.4 percent.
The cost of law school is one obvious obstacle for many African Americans who come from lower income areas. The average cost of law school is more than $34,000 per year, and a place in a top 10 law school costs an average of $43,000 per year.
A 1996 analysis of Black lawyers with private firms by David B. Wilkins and G. Mitu Gulati noted that historically, Black law students eye the job market with the hopes of helping their communities and combating injustice and they have believed that their best shot at doing so was to become defense attorneys.
“Conventional explanations blame the underrepresentation of blacks in corporate firms on either the racism of firms and their clients, or a shortage of qualified, interested black candidates,” said Wilkins and Gulati.
They argue that firms “hiring and training decisions both shape and are shaped by the strategic choices of black candidates, with the net effect of keeping all but a few blacks from being hired and succeeding in the firm setting.”
Wilkins and G. Mitu Gulati argue that firms “hiring and training decisions both shape and are shaped by the strategic choices of black candidates, with the net effect of keeping all but a few blacks from being hired and succeeding in the firm setting.”
Changing the racial demographics among prosecutors, Wilkins and Gulati argue, “is the key to making progress on two of the biggest issues in criminal justice: Shrinking the American prison population and holding police officers who use improper deadly force against unarmed black people accountable for their actions.”
In September 2020, 32 Black federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., signed a 10-page memo to acting U.S. attorney Michael Sherwin outlining changes they say will help ensure that prosecutors make the fairest decisions, void of non-legal influences and biases.
“The memo offers a glimpse into the growing angst among prosecutors within the nation’s largest U.S. attorney’s office, the only such office that handles both local crimes — including homicides, drug cases and sexual assaults — and federal crimes including national security and public corruption cases,” according to a story in the Washington Post.
The proposals, the prosecutors wrote, would lead to better decisions in prosecuting cases and help secure trust and bring more just outcomes in a city where they said the majority of victims, suspects and witnesses are Black.
“As they watched video of a Minneapolis police officer kneel on Floyd’s neck and the demonstrations that followed, some of the Black prosecutors said they became increasingly frustrated that their office was not addressing the racial turmoil that gripped the nation,” the Post reported.
Charlotte civil rights attorney James Ferguson said in an interview in February that the system is “long overdue to have an African American in the position” of U.S. Attorney.
Ferguson said of King, “I think she would be someone who would bring fairness and skill and sensitivity to that job. A sensitivity to what it means to be an African American in this society, a sensitivity to the fact that the picture we have of African Americans going through the criminal justice system is not a pretty one. A sensitivity not just on who to prosecute but in trying to understand how they got where they are, and what are their prospects to become productive citizens.”
There remains obstacles for people of color to be represented through the various levels of society. Understanding the intrinsic racism of the system is a way out of the morass.