by Cynthia Price
Legal News
At the Law Day luncheon April 29, featured speaker Patrick A. Miles said that efforts to move toward diversity and inclusion have been commendatory, but because measurable change has not resulted, the Grand Rapids legal community must do more.
Miles, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan, himself spearheaded some of those efforts, and at the same time is a personal success story in terms of his accomplishments as an African-American.
But his main point on the national Law Day theme of ““Realizing the Dream: Equality for All” was that positive results will be elusive unless the community steps up its intentionality and individuals step out of their comfort zones.
Throughout his address, Miles reviewed the many reasons why this is so difficult, understandable reasons that nonetheless need to be challenged. The first he mentioned was the individual’s need to feel as if he or she is special, as if something about him or her is better than others. “Treating people with equality is hard to do, and it contravenes nature. There’s something in us that wants to feel superior to others, to find differences, to protect ourselves if we have privileges.”
Miles related this to the film 42 about Jackie Robinson integrating national baseball, which he had just seen. Miles remarked that many of the white players knew that they were on big league teams only because African-Americans who were better athletes were not allowed.
He also addressed some of the ways in which attorneys may perpetuate inequality if they are not reflective about their actions. “If you’re a middle-aged white male you may not have much in common with a new female African-American associate,” Miles said. “You may not enjoy the same sports, she may have very different interests and circumstances. So it’s out of your comfort zone to mentor her — you may not project a younger version of yourself onto her. And that creates unintentional bias.”
Miles also related current times with history, primarily through the Emancipation Proclamation, which he noted is 150 years old this year. In the history of President Lincoln coming to the decision about freeing slaves, Miles saw a movement from ambivalence to conviction to affirmative action — though he admitted that Lincoln was a complex figure and political motives may have been the overriding factor in that ideological struggle. “Even historians have a very hard time in determining his intent,” he added.
Miles is himself a complex and colorful figure: an African-American who pioneered a number of “firsts;” a Democrat who garnered the endorsements of over 100 prominent Republicans when he ran against, and lost to, U.S. Rep. Justin Amash in 2010; and a thoughtful attorney whose position on any given issue may be hard to predict.
Noteworthy is that not only was Miles in the same Harvard Law School graduating class as President Barack Obama, but in 1990 Miles was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Record, the student newspaper at the school which featured a still-quoted interview with Obama after his election, also in 1990, as the first African-American President of the Harvard Law Review.
Miles mentioned his famous classmate as part of an argument that the U.S. is changing demographically with or without the full participation of the legal community in reflecting those changes. “If you look back 25 years ago, could anyone have anticipated an African-American like Barack Obama, would be president?” he asked.
Quoting Martin Luther King’s famous statement, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” Miles said that since the times of the Emancipation Proclamation, we as a culture now deplore slavery and overwhelmingly support racial equality.
The attorney in Miles focused on milestone opinions by the U.S. Supreme Court as a determinant in that movement of history, acknowledging that each was a different type of case with particular factors leading into those decisions.
But, Miles said, we are not making progress in acting on those beliefs the way we should be in the local community. “Nationally we are at or near the bottom on a lot of these metrics,” he noted, adding that the National Institute of Law Placement statistics show that the percentage of minority partners in law firms was .6% and female partners 16.2%. He did note that at the associate level the community is doing a little better, with minority associates 12% and females 48%.
Miles reviewed praiseworthy efforts coming out of the Grand Rapids Bar Association including his own role as the chair of the Diversity Committee from 1998 to 2002. In 1998, a survey was sent to GRBA members trying to “discern what were some of the challenges in hiring, retaining and promoting minority attorneys.” He praised the Managing Partners Diversity Collaborative and said he is very hopeful that work will result in change.
But Miles challenged those present to go beyond what they are currently doing, both on a personal and collective basis. “Think of 150 years from now. Looking back at us, what will those future Americans, future Grand Rapidians, think of us? What’s going to be our legacy to them, what history did we make?
“We know that as those who are in a position to create and shape the law, we face the judgment of history. Which side of history will we be on?”
Miles concluded by saying, “Bold action is needed by those who have the power to motivate, who have a clear vision of the future and want this community to be a better place. If those things happen, you — we — will move history towards equality.”
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