Law Students of Color Caucus Sparks Conversation
Saturday, July 31st, 2010
I attended today’s LSOC Caucus, and I must say I was impressed by the quality of the comments that came from the participants, as well as the quality of the leadership provided by LSRJ Intern Jeryl Hayes. It all started with an e-mail invitation to attend the Caucus during our lunch hour on Saturday. When I got there, I instantly felt that familiar feeling of comfort when all of a sudden, I was no longer the only brown person in the immediate vicinity. To my left and to my right, behind me and in front of me, I saw a diverse group of advocates who had one definite thing in common: our passion for reproductive justice.
It was a beautiful thing! We talked about racial tensions on our campuses and the dearth of minority lawyers in the RJ field. We talked about our personal ambitions as future attorneys and what kind of pressures we faced from our respective communities to do something outside of public interest law. Participants also touched on issues I had not thought of before – for example, what a strong reproductive justice movement would look like in the South and how law students of color and LGBTQ law students could contribute to it. The conversation was fascinating, and above all, I think it was so important to create a time and space to address a topic that rarely gets airtime: the intersection of race and gender that lies at the heart of reproductive justice.
There is much more to explore as we return to our campuses and try to make intersectionality a bigger part of our LSRJ chapter advocacy. But I believe the seeds have been planted for a keen awareness about how our identities impact what we say and how our words are heard by others. As a Latina law student, I appreciated the opportunity to reflect on how my identity brings a different perspective to conversations about reproductive justice on campus, at my internships, and in the lives of people I talk to everyday.
Lucy Panza