Are white public defenders just chasing racial justice clout?
And why in the world would I throw myself into this fight on behalf of them
[Post by Citizen Lane.]
Today’s Twitter main character was a young lady who suggested that white public defenders do what they do out of a desire to gain racial justice clout. In pursuit of this clout, they dominate public defense spaces and shut out voices and attorneys of color (who presumably ALSO become defenders out of a desire to defend racial and ethnic minorities against a racist justice system).
When several of my colleagues pointed out that this argument lacked factual support and was further nonsensical, imputing an impure motive to an entire class of people, they were roundly mocked. I attempted to wade into the discourse, asking why the default setting was to assume all interlocutors were arguing in bad faith, only to have my mouth filled with words not my own and my good faith questioned. It was a jarring experience.
Most people would describe me as a “woke politically-correct social justice warrior liberal,” though I’d be mortally offended at the use of any or each of those terms to describe me. But in terms of my politics, I am explicitly, and proudly, liberatory. Racial justice is a component of justice to me; as long as people are burdened by a racist justice system, liberation of people from that system is a core ethic of my thought.
I do not, however, perceive myself as an “ally” of the racially disadvantaged. Nope, I know I’m a lily-white upper middle-class scion who used family wealth and connections to get into and through law school. That’s not a pejorative; it is simply a fact about me. I did not become a criminal defense attorney out of some misplaced sense of white guilt or desire to help the downtrodden, though I am proud to do so. I became a defense attorney because I am a defender.
That is my personality archetype. If I see someone being attacked, my instinct isn’t to join the pack for the hunt, it is to intersperse myself between the person under attack and danger. When I played Dungeons and Dragons as a kid, I always picked a certain class and alignment – Lawful Good paladin. My position in high school football? Defensive end. Put a hockey stick in my hands? Stay-at-home defenseman. Playing multiplayer online games, I pick the defensive character. Why? Because my mindset, my core being, is geared toward being a shield rather than a sword. It is just who I am.
And I spent a lot of time working with, mentoring, training, and supporting other defense attorneys. I am a member of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. I write our amicus briefs. I often take up cases on appeal I know will never pay me a dime because it’s the right thing to do. I still take appointed criminal cases, although my caseload says I do not have to, because I made a deal with some judges that when they had cases that they couldn’t farm out to the usual crop of court-appointed attorneys, I would be there to deal with the mean and nasty ones. Because someone must, and that someone sometimes has to be me.
Because our justice system is racist, that means that yes, a lot of the time, the people I am defending are not from my social class. When you’re born to the strata I am, wealth, position, and power insulate you from a lot of mistakes. Not a lot of people in my position ever face serious criminal charges, and if we do, we have a special name called “white collar” for it. That means, by simple force of circumstance, that most people I defend do not look, talk, dress, or appear like me.
But that does not matter to me. I defend; I do not discriminate. I will defend the guy with a swastika tattooed on his chest (and have done so) the same as I would defend a Native American or a Jewish person or a black woman or a gay Asian man (and have done so). To me, and this is what stood beneath my indignation on behalf of my unfairly slandered kin on the public defense bar, it does not matter who you are or what you did or didn’t do. What matters is that the government has put you in its sights and its intending to deprive you of life and liberty. And to that, my answer is simply “no.”
It's not “no, I want to be seen as a white savior.” I am no one’s savior. I am not here to save you. I am here to defend you.
It’s not “no, I want to assuage my guilt at being born to an upper middle-class family.” I do not have any guilt about that; I no more chose to be born to a family of degreed professionals than the child born of homeless drug addicts chose her parents. I do believe I have a responsibility to society to use the gifts given to me—the gifts of persuasion, public speaking, analytical thinking, and charisma—to benefit society, but I believe that any of us owes that to our fellow humans.
It's not, “no, I want people to think well of me.” Believe me, that needs to be far from your mind if you become a criminal defense attorney. Most people will regard you as slightly worse than pond scum, because at least pond scum never stood between torch-wielding mob and a pedophile asking them to think about his essential humanity before they hanged him from an oak.
My answer of “no” is because I am, at the very core of my being, a defender. When I see someone attacked, even if that attack is justified, a part of me says, “you gotta go through me first.” And hey, I recognize that there are times when that is the right result, when the evidence indicates that I should lose. And I am fine with that because it is not about me. It is about what is right, and it is right that everyone should have a defense.
Even public defenders when they’re unfairly maligned as clout-chasing, white-guilt ridden agents of racial injustice. You come swinging for my friends, I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m saying I’m throwing myself between the combatants because that is what it means to be a defender.
(In the specific case, though, you’re wrong. More below the payline.)