In their words: Profs Tanya Cooper and Roslyn Satchel (Seaver) represent Pepperdine at The Atlantic Summit on Race and Justice
September 26, 2016 | By Alexa Brown —Tanya Cooper, law professor and Director of the Restoration and Justice Clinic at Pepperdine Law, recently received an invitation to attend The Atlantic Summit on Race and Justice in Downtown Los Angeles on September 15th. She jumped at the opportunity to represent Pepperdine in this national-level forum. She was joined by her colleague Dr. Roslyn Satchel -- a professor at Pepperdine's Seaver College -- and nearly twenty law and undergrad students, making for an impressive Pepperdine delegation at the conference.
The Surf Report sat down with Cooper and Satchel to talk about their experiences at Pepperdine leading up to the Summit:
Professor Tanya Cooper: When Atlantic Live invited me to this event, I immediately thought,"Yes, this is right up my alley,"
because I love to talk about race and justice in the law.
I thought of Roslyn as well, who just finished her book What Movies Teach About Race: Exceptionalism, Erasure and Entitlement (November 2016 release).
Dr. Roslyn Satchel: It's all about how historical ideologies seep into pop culture and are recycled constantly.
Cooper: We saw this summit as a huge opportunity: some of these speakers are activists from
entertainment, from communications, from the social justice and non-profit world.
We're very interested in issues of racial disparities and disproportions, which essentially
means when one racial group is under- or over- represented in an institution and treated
differently, for example, mass incarceration of African Americans. Last year, I taught
a Lawyering Process class right after the Napa wine train incident where a few African-American women were kicked off of the train for essentially being
too loud, and the hashtag associated was #laughingwhileblack. It was a brilliant time
to be teaching Lawyering Process and practicing civil procedure because the fictitious
case that students litigated all semester was on consumer racism, and Roslyn was the
plaintiff in this fictitious case (she was also involved in the events that unfolded
last year surrounding media outlet YikYak on the Seaver campus, which I'll let her say more about). We had great discussions
all semester about race, justice, questioning whether post-racial America exists or
not, and all of the examples why not.id="attachment_21562" align="alignleft" width="500" Professors Roslyn Satchel (far left) and Tanya Cooper (second from right) with attendees
of The Atlantic Summit on Race and Justice.My background is also in family law and
domestic violence, where I also see a ton of disparities. It's routinely the African-Americans
who are overrepresented in almost every legal system, historically and today, and
who are oppressed by those systems in criminal justice, child welfare, domestic violence,
immigration, housing, you name it. I've written about these racial disparities specifically in the foster care system, so that's a big
reason why I am interested in what this conference has to offer. One of the sponsors
is The Annie E. Casey Foundation, and they do a lot of work within the foster care system. I think this is a good
opportunity for Pepperdine because some may not consider our school as being very
diverse or inclusive. This is not unlike what's happening at every campus across the
country, but I think it's important for us to recognize it and talk about it, and
keep talking about race and justice issues in the spheres we live in. For me, that's law
and academia. The School of Law itself is increasingly diverse, and our recent incoming classes reflect that richness. Students are really interested in talking about diversity
and justice issues, which is another reason why we are so interested in bringing them
along to this summit. We'd like to see how we can participate and engage in the conversation
there and focus on how we can then continue it here. In a nutshell, that's why I am
interested in attending and representing Pepperdine at this event.id="attachment_21564"
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The event was catered by Homegirl, an enterprise of Homeboy Industries, which helps
to employ formerly incarcerated or gang-related members.Satchel: Already we have ten students from the undergrad campus planning to attend the event.
Like Tanya mentioned, racial events at Seaver last year involving the social platform
YikYak were precipitated by a series of microaggressions on campus. The YikYak comments
came in on the tail end of what had already been a very racially charged climate.
There had been situations where students were making racist comments in classrooms
and professors were not necessarily sure how to handle it; students of color were
feeling quite compromised and feeling as though they weren't being heard were they
to go to the chair of the division or even the deans office. They simply felt like
no one was listening. When the YikYak comments came around, it was bringing that bubble
to a head. I will never forget, we were in class -- I teach an Intercultural Media
Literacy class -- and after a break students came back into class in tears and angry
about the comments they had just read on YikYak. They were really looking for a way
to respond in a proactive way. They wanted very much to address these issues of structural
and institutional racism that we had been discussing in class as they were manifesting
on Pepperdine's Seaver campus. The Seaver students were inspired by what Law's Black
Law Students Association did in conjunction with Black Lives Matter and wanted to
conduct a demonstration of their own that would be similar to what was being done
at Mizzou at the time. The students at Seaver took over the cafeteria and had a peaceful
demonstration. Later, they took to the administration building and sat down, and what
was really interesting is that the President [Andrew K. Benton] came out and sat with them, and had a conversation about their concerns. What the
students called for included several demands, but what it basically all came down
to was: practice what you preach; if you are serious about the Christian mission,
then you must be serious about racial justice, gender justice, and justice for LGBTQ
students. They called for equity in terms of decision-making, a chief diversity officer
at the University, and so forth. As a result of that, the Dean's Office and others
selected me, based on my background in cultural competency, to work with faculty and students on multiple occasions around how we can develop a culturally competent climate at Seaver. That included
a series of meetings and negotiations with the students to see which demands the administration
was willing to respond to and act upon. Now, I am also doing a similar consultation
with the Graduate School of Education and Psychology, which includes training student
cohorts on what it means to operate with cultural competence in the academic environment.id="attachment_21566"
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President of Atlantic Live Margaret Low Smith introduced the event.This Race and
Justice Summit ties in very well to the work we've been doing here at Pepperdine.
Like Tanya, I come from a racial justice background, especially in relationship to
human rights. I worked the juvenile court systems in Fulton County, Georgia, during
and after law school. I was involved in studying what was happening in foster care
with children of African descent, in interracial adoptions, and the "conditions of
confinement" for African-American juveniles being detained in so-called homeless shelters
while their white counterparts were going to rehabilitative programs. Often times
these children were further harmed at their institutional placements, which were incarceration
settings for minor offenses, particularly when it came to African-American children
and girls, and especially African-American girls. They weren't being placed in rehabilitative
centers, they were being locked up. Calling attention to racial disparities there
led to system-wide improvements. The bottom line is, I've had about 16 years of experience
studying these race and justice issues and how they manifest in different institutional
settings. I think it is imperative for conversations, like this Race and Justice Summit, to provide a more holistic
engagement with the variety of ways racism manifests itself. Some of the panelists
are from the Black Lives Matter Movement, and as they say, it is important to recognize
that state-sanctioned violence is far more than just police violence, it is a larger
institutional and structural framework of racism that we have to notice and address
among multiple interconnected elements. If we have kids who are coming into the foster
care system, who are being channeled into the juvenile justice system, and who are
then going into adult prisons instead of colleges like , then, unless we challenge
the system that allows that to happen, we are a part of the problem and not a part
of the solution. I'm hoping the Race and Justice Summit helps bring us all closer
to being part of the solution.
Cooper: What Roslyn said about cultural competence resonates so strongly, because I strongly believe and tell my students in each of my classes that you cannot be a good lawyer unless you are a culturally competent one. You need to understand who your clients are and where they are coming from in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, language, etc, and that in turn helps us understand why they act in the manner they do, and it helps us to better represent them. Furthermore, it helps us understand the actions of other legal actors, like judges and other lawyers. It matters at every level of what we do. I think it's also important for us to attend as faculty members and women of color and to represent Pepperdine, and show that this is Pepperdine; these are the issues that we care about and they happen here just as they happen everywhere else. We are moving to address them and talk constructively about them.
Satchel: And to take leadership. If Pepperdine is to be the leader among institutions as we all aspire for it to be, then we must be on the cutting edge in response to these issues of racial and cultural injustice, and even unintentional bias. That is a very key part of how best we can employ our Christian university brand in the interest of justice. And we are willing to take these hard stances. The President Pepperdine University's ... leadership in saying, "we don't need IX exemption because we are doing well to create a climate here where Title IX claims will rarely occur," we can do that in regard to issues of race as well. I believe that the leadership of our University wants to do that and are looking for ways to actively do so. We are helping them as faculty members: we want to be a part of the solution and not the problem. We are taking this step attending the summit to be a part of the national conversation on race and justice and to represent our institution in doing so.
All opinions expressed are the speaker's own.
From The Atlantic:
The Atlantic will be in Los Angeles to explore the changing narrative of race and identity in this country. In our second annual Race + Justice summit we will convene civic leaders, activists, artists, policymakers and storymakers for a day of unflinching conversation. The summit will unfold in multiple chapters, as we try to answer the questions: Who is California? Where is Home? What is Justice? and Whose Story Gets Told? Within that framework we will tackle some of the most pressing issues of our time, from immigration and housing, to policing and the role that Hollywood plays in shaping the story of race in America.
By Alexa Brown | Pepperdine Law