Poetic Justice

 

The Black Lives Matter movement sparked a racial debate amongst a community of nationalist, a year on are we all just as passionate? I for one followed the tragic story of George Floyd and was reduced to tears watching the footage of Ahmaud Arbery. It was these two pinnacle moments that drove me to investigate the deaths of innocuous black people at the hands of police brutality. It was often described in horrific incidents where victims screamed out "I can't breathe" as they struggled to breathe, pressure applied to the neck with enough force to stop oxygen or blood flowing to the brain. A measure commonly used by enforcement officers as a way of controlling casualties by making them feel afraid or intimidated. 

In a sense, there was a semblance of gleeful trepidation when I heard that the whole population was just as grappled by this issue and were openly discussing the problems of social diversion, whenever a person of colour would engage in colloquial exchanges centred around racial sentiments. On the one hand, the debate had already been inducted in the past and little progress had strived to be made evidenced by recent events. So what did this mean for black people?

I recently had this conversation with a university friend, we were both raised in Ghanaian households studied law and were pursuing roles within the legal sector, in areas of public law. At the time I was researching city firms that offered graduates training schemes with incentive high salaries, I would scroll through the About Us categories and would see a row of the same type of individuals, a mixture of females & males with caucasian complexions from the same educational institutes. 

I would shake my head in disbelief surely this couldn't; be an accurate representation of students in the legal sector, (my class alone made up 15% of BME undergraduates) so why won't people racially like me employed at these firms? It was the most discouraging feeling, tightened to a measured amount of anger as a scrolled through the pages of people. I won't name the string of firms that this reflection applied to, but if lucky I would reach the 5th page and see one individual nominated the "token representative". 

I would read their columns and be struck by their impressive resume ie; Worked with the United Embassy, undertaking diplomatic advocacy for the President of the United States (gravely exaggerated). But this was a competitive industry cut-throat and unapologetic to most, so why did it owe me a black woman any favours. I wouldn't have desired a conditional offer for a position because of the virtue of being a minority student. So, in the wise shared philosophy of civil rights activist Martin Luther King, I was not asking to be judged by the colour of my skin but by the content of my character. Nevertheless, this was conflicted by the struggles of not even getting the opportunity to be in the room (literally/figuratively) and have a character judged by the firms that mattered.  

I read an article today on this exact topic, on legal diversity linked here:https://www.legaldiversity.org/post/our-names-do-not-sound-british-enough by writer Isabella Fabunmi and I agreed on the points raised in the September 16 2020 issue. The term BAME is a turn of pharse that unities a group the same way but we are far from united. Shocking studies indicate 5% of the UK lawyer population are black, a grim reading for campaigners at a time when they are calling for institiuations such as law firms to take a stand against racism and improve their diversity. In light of the protests going on around the world. Arguably it has been addressed progressively by law firms ranked highly in the records of racial equality with offices like Cooley, Clifford Chance and Latham & Watkins employing in the 3/4% of black lawyers in the legal industry. This is compartively different for other BME minorities, who stand a greater chance of employement in the UK legal sector. The proportion of Asian lawyers is 14% compared to 6% of the UK workforce which is further broken into sets of gender, sexual orientation, age and religion quantitative data. So is the possibilities of a black man/women becoming a lawyer in todays standards less. Yes the data on this suggests there is, but that should not be a discouraging sign of hopelessness since there are campaginers working tirelessly to distill and quieten the noise of racism. The group BLA (Black Lawyers Association) has a website dedicated to offering minorites the opportunity to showcase their CV's to large corporate firms that may otherwise be buried in the sea of rejected piles of graduate applications.We can also improve are chances collectively as graduates/post guaduates to speak out on matters we are passionate about in a social media age.