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MILLENNIUM SHOWDOWN FOR PUBLIC INTEREST LAW 17
presented significant opportunity for lawyers to be visionaries and effect social
change. 131 The public interest lawyer of today is identified by the procedure underlying
the respective practice. There is less focus on substantive rights and a
preoccupation with the effect of one's legal work. 132 Success is more likely when
the goal is abstract, disassociated from less favored constituencies or costs. Pursuing
the path of least resistance has become a substitute for the struggle toward
justice. 133 There is, however, no moral imperative to exact much beyond the
rhetoric on issues like racial equality.134 The lack of identity and commitment to
objective goals and standards breed indifference and complacency from advocates.
Constituents languish without appropriate remedies in the decaying orbit
of isolation.
While civil and individual rights organizations have worked together productively
to address basic questions of inequality in the larger society, the inability to
determine and relinquish ill-gotten gains associated with white privilege and
overrepresentation contribute to blurring of goals and wandering fOCUS. 135
There is active resistance to increased racial minority presence in the work force
and in decision-making positions. 136 Claims of reverse discrimination have their
origin in the misguided belief that racial equality only exists when whites are not
disadvantaged. American society has been out of balance from its inception. To
the extent that inequity has resulted in the overrepresentation of any group, correcting
the system should result in changes for the inappropriately advantaged
group.137 Only subordination or some other illegal system could preserve the
disproportionately advantaged from experiencing racism consistent with justice.
"Most white people have no experience of a genuine cultural pluralism, one in
which whites' perspective, behavioral expectations, and values are not taken to
be the standard from which all other cultural norms deviate.,,138 To the extent
that public interest advocates fail to challenge or remedy racial segregation, they
actively engage in the continued oppression of racial minorities. "Even whites
who do not harbor any conscious or unconscious belief in the superiority of white
people participate in the maintenance of white supremacy whenever [they] impose
white norms without acknowledging their whiteness. ,,139 Unlike the untrained
citizen, lawyers are sufficiently educated to understand the dynamics of
racial oppression and the mechanics of balancing a system. Racial oppression
131 Esquivel, supra note 1, at 347-48.
132 Id. at 329.
133 Id.
134 Id.
135 Barbara J. Flagg, "Was Blind, But Now I See": White Race Consciousness and the Requirement
of Discriminatory Intent, 91 MICH. L. REV. 953, 969 (1993).
136 Id. at 1016.
137 Id.
138 Id. at 979.
139 Id.