Some news outlets have spoken: DEI (“Diversity, Equity, Inclusion”) is dead. Even before the recent election, DEI was already sinking.
What began and gained momentum was 2020 Black Lives Matter movement honoring the lives of Michael Brown and George Floyd. Corporate America and government entities adopted practices in alignment with the tenets of DEI. MSN reported that over half of these efforts are being pushed back. Some of those include Walmart, Boeing and John Deere.
DEI departments have been cut over the last two years and it is estimated that one-third of DEI professionals lost their jobs in 2022.
The DEI advocates, particularly universities, are looking for ways to skirt new directives and court rulings.
What can we as lawyers do to preserve the gains that have been achieved by DEI in the legal profession?
I suggest that a good beginning is for each of us tell our stories.
How we have experienced discrimination, how we dealt with the challenges and overcome barriers?
Revealing our histories will hopefully continue to inspire the tenets of DEI and put a real face on the importance of its role in the administration of justice.
Here’s mine:
I didn’t know the meaning of diversity when I was growing up, but looking back on my life, I certainly experienced times that I was the outsider, the only one, the first.
Finding myself in situations that lacked diversity has affected my world view of this important issue, the way I live and what diversity in the law means to me.
As a child in a small Pennsylvania mill town, I was the only Jewish girl in my class. In time, teachers began to rely on me as their Jewish educator.
When Chanukah came, it was my duty to bring in the Menorah “(the candle holder”) and to explain the difference between Christmas and Chanukah. While both holidays occur in proximity, they have nothing in common. So, the first thing, I tried to do was to dispel this notion. Not easy!
Sure, gift giving abounds for both, but that is where it stops.
I knew a lot about Christmas. I was Mary in the holiday pageant, knew all the lyrics to the Christmas carols and participated in caroling in my neighborhood. It was not an act of faith for me. They just needed a strong alto! Besides, I wanted to be with my friends.
Chanukah is the story of a small band of believers withstanding the onslaught of a massive army trying to kill or convert them. This band was known as the Maccabees; they stood up against religious tyranny, defending their faith. It is about oil and the light emanating from it for eight days giving hope to my people.
When I was a teenager, I had the opportunity to be a part of a summer trip to Israel. I was the first in my immediate family to do, to see the important religious sites, visit family we had never met, and understand the meaning of this Jewish homeland.
Part of the obligation of being a scholarship recipient for this experience was post-trip. We each pledged to do presentations for community and religious groups on what we had learned. I developed a slide show that I showed to a Lutheran church group, a Catholic school and school classes. My show included Christian and Bahai pictures and ones that would resonate more to Jewish groups. I had travelled to Bethlehem, Haifa, Jerusalem; I had worked on a kibbutz, picking grapes and olives. Becoming a community educator sparked an interest in interfaith conversations and awareness of other cultures.
You could say I was ahead of my times. And I am grateful that I was.
When I applied to colleges, it never occurred to me that I would be discriminated against. This time it was not religious based, but gender based. I was accepted into the University of Pennsylvania, but they did not have room in their dormitories for me. They had five dorms, four were allocated for men, one for women. I did not know this was discrimination until many years later. I just thought it was just the way things were done.
Later when I signed up for my student teaching assignment, I was paired with an African-American young woman. We were given a list of homes that would house us in the school district to which we would live. (You were not allowed to live in an apartment!) As Julie and I went to each home, the owners made excuses why we both couldn’t stay with them. I was the shorter of us; one family said the room would work for the “little one” but not both of us. We left the town of Elizabeth, Pennsylvania without achieving our mission of finding housing.
Julie never complained about this. I was furious!
Back at Penn State, I groused to anyone I saw about our experience. One friend knew someone on the school board of the district. We received a call from this member offering us a place to stay. We graciously accepted this unexpected gift.
In my first year of law school, I stood up to answer a professor’s question and he said: “Miss Ehrenwerth, what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?!”
My candidacy to be the first woman judge in St. Louis County was sparked by the realization; in a court house where justice was meted out on a daily basis, by 31 judges, there were NO women judges.
So, I ran to give visibility to this disparity, and then I won!
When I retired from the bench, I felt a sense of freedom. I could be open about my sexual orientation and joined forces with other gay attorneys: Jason Hall, Michael Colona, Keith Price and ally Amanda Mc Nelley to form LAWYERS FOR EQUALITY, an organization that could respond to anti-LGBTQT court practices and legislation. Eventually we were integrated into BAMSL’s Committee on Minorities. Judge Mooney gave us great inspiration presenting his story to law firms in hopes of giving broader meaning to DEI.
As a profession, we need to keep hope alive on the Commission for Racial and Ethnic Fairness and be supporting each other’s affinity bar associations: Mound City, Women’s Lawyers’ Association, Asian Pacific bar group, as examples.
I am so proud that Paule, Camazine & Blumenthal has an existing DEI committee. Two of our newer lawyers, Robert Parson and Stella Nguepnang, are African-American and bring their unique experiences to our practice and culture. We learn from each other and grow in ways that we had not before. We have come together to watch a documentary on Homer Phillips Hospital and to read books about racism.
If we truly believe in justice for all, we cannot let the values inherent in DEI die. Let’s re-brand it, if need be. It can be about access, fairness and opportunity. Let us not act out of fear, but rather courage. To shy away from injustices that we see is cowardly and not consistent with the oath that we each took.
Tell me your stories and I will share them in the hope that we can keep DEI anew and alive.
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