Erasing Race from Legal Education

In this Article, Professor Greenberg argues that law schools claim to treat African American students as if their race is irrelevant, yet law school curricula have a hidden message that African American students are in fact inferior and dangerous to white students. When African American students do not perform as well as white students, they are assumed to have deficient skills and are placed in remedial programs to improve those skills. Professor Greenberg argues that the cause of African American students’ poor performance in law school is not necessarily deficient skills, but rather a bias inherent in the structure of legal education that rewards cultural traits that do not match those often identified with African American culture. Thus, despite their claims to be color-blind, law schools provide inherent preferences for students who can act, think, and write white.