Parishti Project

There is a mixed message in this story about a female judge being removed from the bench after secret recordings of her saying homophobic and racist things are leaked.

Often when a person with a position of power (like a police officer, or a judge) is held accountable, it is a marginalized person who was noncompliant with the institutional norms of that profession: a black police officer, or a female judge. While we can rejoice that a wrong has been identified and exposed, we can also question whether it would have happened if the wrongdoer had been white and male.

There is a tremendous amount of pressure on non-normative participants in any industry to code-switch to fit in and improve their professional opportunities; to laugh along with peers at an inappropriate joke, or remain silent in our discomfort.

When I asked a colleague what he meant when he said he "would never work for an Indian", I did so at a networking dinner hosted by his accounting firm for a number of solo and small law firms. It amounted to a very public severance of our working relationship, and a shot across the bow to his partners. I knew that whatever qualities this particular accountant might possess to benefit his clients, I could not trust that he would do his best for all of my clients. I would never send him a referral, because I could not trust his judgment. There was nothing of that working relationship to salvage.

Where can we find the courage to do that when the rest of the group is willing to give the offender the benefit of the doubt? When it is ourselves that we are cutting out of the group, and not the offender? And when an employer has the ability to silence us? It is much easier to cut the non-normative (marginalized) individuals for exhibiting biases that pervade our profession, the same biases for which the truly powerful are not held accountable. They hold all the cards.

So, while I am glad that one person is being held accountable for bias, I am equally certain that others are not being held accountable for this same bias. It is a near statistical impossibility that the only bad actors in powerful professions are among the marginalized.

...which means we need to take a closer look at the systems that are expected to filter these biases out of our judicial systems (and their feeder systems, like law enforcement).

If they were working as well as they should, we would see more than just marginalized persons being held accountable.