BRING MUSIC IN (Audioblocks “Stumbling”)
NEWS MONTAGE
Trayvon Martin … Jordan Davis … Walter Scott … Philando Castile …
RISA GOLUBOFF: The stories keep coming, one after another.
NEWS MONTAGE
Stephon Clark … Botham Jean … Atatiana Jefferson … Ahmaud Arbery …
LESLIE KENDRICK: Instances of police and vigilante violence against Black people.
NEWS MONTAGE
Breonna Taylor … Daniel Prude … George Floyd … Daunte Wright ...
RISA GOLUBOFF: Though the media attention around a particular case may eventually dissipate, the trauma to Black communities lingers.
‘I CAN’T BREATHE’ LARGE CROWD OF PROTESTORS MARCHES AND CHANTS THROUGH DOWNTOWN LEXINGTON (LEXINGTON HERALD LEADER)
PROTESTORS: I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!
LESLIE KENDRICK: In the pursuit of equity in our society, understanding the impact of cultural trauma on Black communities may be key.
RISA GOLUBOFF: What role does the law play in this cycle, and can it help end it? That’s what we’re discussing in this episode of Common Law.
FADE MUSIC OUT; BRING THEME MUSIC IN AND UP
RISA GOLUBOFF: Welcome back to Common Law, a podcast from the University of Virginia School of Law. I'm Risa Goluboff, the dean.
LESLIE KENDRICK: And I'm Leslie Kendrick, the vice dean. In this season of Common Law, we're exploring issues of law and equity.
BRING THEME MUSIC UP, THEN UNDER
RISA GOLUBOFF: In our last episode, we talked with UVA Law professor Rachel Harmon about balancing the benefits and harms of policing.
RACHEL HARMON: I started to just ask the question, well, when are arrests really their most essential? When is this worth what we're doing in imposing harm? And I didn't expect the answer to be very rarely.
LESLIE KENDRICK: If you missed that episode, we hope you’ll go back and listen.
BRING THEME MUSIC UP, THEN UNDER
RISA GOLUBOFF: Today, we’re exploring cultural trauma with Angela Onwuachi-Willig. Before we get started with Angela’s interview, I want to note that we recorded this conversation back in January. As you’ll hear, much of our discussion centers on the double trauma of police violence against black people and the fact that such violence often escapes legal consequences. Though the recent verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial provides some counterweight against the latter trauma, much is sadly the same with more police shootings in the news every day, and few trials ending like this one did. I want to alert our listeners that because we’re talking about these traumatic experiences, some of what you hear may be disturbing. Now, for our interview.
FADE THEME MUSIC OUT
LESLIE KENDRICK: Angela Onwuachi-Willig is dean of the Boston University School of Law. She’s written extensively about the long-lasting cultural trauma that results from high-profile cases of police brutality and acts of racist violence.
RISA GOLUBOFF: Angela, thank you so much for joining us.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: Thank you for having me.
RISA GOLUBOFF: I’m so glad you’re here, and I feel like we’ve been building up to your interview, this interview, all season — from our first conversation with Randy Kennedy about racial “promised lands,” to our most recent episode about policing the police with Rachel Harmon. And throughout the season, we’ve talked again and again about instances of police violence and the resulting calls for social justice, but we haven’t talked yet about the psychological and cultural impact of that violence. So, first of all, can you just start us off by telling us what do you and other scholars in the field mean by “cultural trauma”?
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: So, cultural trauma occurs when you have a group or some type of collective that experiences a really tragic horrific event, and that occurrence forever changes the group, forever changes how the group sees itself, forever changes how the group understands the world, all of those things. And then that group communicates that narrative to each other and to society.
LESLIE KENDRICK: You’ve done extensive research and work in this field and we do want to get into the nuances of your research, but I just want to emphasize to listeners that this field of study is built around very compelling and important real-world experience. What inspired you to study it?
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: I mean, it's a very personal topic for me.
BRING MUSIC IN (Audioblocks - “Ambient Trailer”)
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: I was motivated to begin to look at these cases and to look at cultural trauma in particular, after the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman.
OFFICIAL GEORGE ZIMMERMAN 911 CALL
REPORTER: In February 2012, Zimmerman spotted the teen walking home and called police.
ZIMMERMAN/911 CALL: And he’s a Black male.
REPORTER: Eventually, the two came face to face in a deadly altercation.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: Hearing about that story and just being so upset and completely captivated by it. And I felt really sort of paralyzed in many ways. At the time that Trayvon Martin was killed, my oldest son was 14 years old. As an African American parent, you see that people see your child initially, oh, this cute little kid, and then at some point they become a threat and the way people look at them is different.
OFFICIAL GEORGE ZIMMERMAN 911 CALL
GEORGE ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around looking about.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: It felt like it could have been any of our children who were walking in a neighborhood and who were viewed as not belonging and have somebody like George Zimmerman follow them home and assume all the worst things and not think about what it looked like to the kid who knew that he had a right to be there to have a strange man following him.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: I really followed the case and I remember watching parts of the trial. And then when the verdict came out …
AMERICANS REACTION TO ZIMMERMAN VERDICT (GLOBAL NEWS)
REPORTER: Zimmerman is a free man, acquitted by six female jurors (protest sounds) — a decision that sparked protests across the country last night.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: It was heartbreaking and yet, you know, in some ways expected. So it was a really mixed emotion.
LESLIE KENDRICK: One thing that you've talked about is how cultural trauma can happen in different ways, that there can be shocking events or acute events, which create cultural trauma, and that's what cultural sociologists tend to focus on. But you've really helped to explicate that cultural trauma can arise not only out of the things that are out of the ordinary, but out of the things that are routine.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: When I was reading the literature, I was really drawn to it. I mean, it's just really fascinating in general, right, to understand what happens to a group when an event occurs and a narrative emerges out of that event. One of the things that, you know, I couldn't get past was the sense that it needed to emerge out of something that was sort of shocking because if you are a group that is routinely marginalized and devalued, it may not be shocking — it’s certainly hurtful, it's harmful, it's all of those things — and yet it could be expected and I wanted to sort of dig that out and to talk about how, you know, you could have cultural trauma narratives emerge out of things that are really quite ordinary.
LESLIE KENDRICK: In outlining the elements of trauma, you've highlighted both the history of the harm itself, you've talked about widespread media attention being part of it, and also the public discourse about the meaning of the underlying harm. I'm interested in the fact that two out of those three are really about speech, they're about how we as a society encounter and communicate about these events. Tell us a little bit more about how important you think that is.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: Yeah, no, it's incredibly important because what's important about cultural trauma is the narrative that emerges. It's the story that the community tells to itself about these repeated events or the event. You know, it needs to get enough attention that enough people within the affected community know about it, that we can say that it's a trauma that affects the entire group.
RISA GOLUBOFF: And then, you’ve said, it matters how the group TALKs about that trauma. How the story is told and retold, right? And one way that’s passed on, obviously, is from parent to child.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: Everyone knows about ‘the talk,’ right? The talk that parents of Black children have with their children about how do you handle police.
BRING MUSIC UP, THEN UNDER
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: And as a parent, that is traumatic because you know you're destroying your kid’s childhood when you're doing that. And I think it's obviously traumatic for the kid, right? And yet it's necessary for our survival. I mean, I can’t imagine the number of lives that have been saved in part because of the talk.
BRING MUSIC UP, THEN UNDER
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: Of course, people might follow all the rules like Philando Castile and yet still it results in a shooting.
FADE MUSIC OUT
MINNESOTA OFFICER CHARGED IN SHOOTING OF PHILANDO CASTILE (CBS EVENING NEWS)
REPORTER: Prosecutor Jon Choi said today that Philando Castile was shot seven times by officer Jeronimo Yanez less than a minute after being pulled over.
LESLIE KENDRICK: In talking about media attention and how that informs narratives, you know, over the last 15 years, we've seen lots of changes in technology that affect what gets attention, what types of crimes are publicized. And it seems as though this has helped American society recognize that there's an undeniable deficit in the provision of due process and protection of the laws when it comes to the safety and security — basic safety and security — of African Americans in the United States. But it also seems enormously overwhelming …
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: Right.
LESLIE KENDRICK: … but I'm wondering what you think about the technological aspect and where we are on this today as a society, as we witness instance after instance of violence.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: Yeah. So, you know, I have mixed emotions about it, but I think, largely, I think, they've been good in terms of movement. I think it's important because Black people have been talking about police brutality forever (laughing), and I think there's been a, sort of an unwillingness to believe the stories.
BRING MUSIC IN (Audioblocks - “Ambient Trailer”)
NEW CELL PHONE VIDEO SHOWS ARREST OF GEORGE FLOYD (CBS MIAMI)
REPORTER: Courtney Ross is Floyd’s girlfriend.
COURTNEY ROSS: It’s clear as water. That video says it all. If you don’t see murder, I don’t know what you see.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: The George Floyd killing, which has opened so many eyes. I personally can't even … phew … you know, I can't watch the whole thing, certainly in one sitting and I can't watch the whole thing. I don't even know if I've watched every single bit of it. And yet it was necessary. If that tape didn't exist, would we be experiencing any of the gains that we have now? And so that young woman who videotaped that is a hero because she helped to ignite a movement that has resulted in some change and some discourse that I think is really important.
RISA GOLUBOFF: The ubiquity of cell phone cameras has obviously made it possible for bystanders to document these incredibly disturbing events as opposed to relying, as we would have had to do in the past, on police accounts or on footage from a local TV station, but what about the role of social media itself, beyond the cameras?
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: One of the things that social media has done is that it has allowed people to not have to rely on those gatekeepers, right? So I can send a tweet out — I mean, if that tweet becomes viral, then the news has to follow my story, right? The news has to follow where the attention has gone. And I think that's largely been a positive.
LESLIE KENDRICK: You’ve mentioned the impact of cultural trauma on individuals and parents. Can you tell us what impact does cultural trauma have more broadly?
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: There are clearly negative impacts, right? Because it tears at the fabric of a community with the repeated acquittals and the non-indictments, it has the impact of leaving so many people who are citizens in this country feeling like they aren't protected, you know, they don't have equal protection under the laws and basically our lives aren't valued equally. And so it's mostly a negative, but there are some positive outcomes that come out of it. And of course, you know, some of that results in movements, right? I mean, so we saw that, of course, with Emmett Till.
THE MURDER OF EMMETT TILL (60 MINUTES)
ED BRADLEY: Emmett Till was a young Black boy who was murdered in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman …
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: The reaction and the response to the killing of Emmett Till and the acquittal of his killers helps to launch the Civil Rights Movement, which, you know, resulted in the passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, you know, the Voting Rights Act. Fair Housing Act, of course, three years later after the Voting Rights Act. So many things that are so important to our country today.
BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTESTORS STAGE MARCHES AROUND THE WORLD (THE INDEPENDENT)
PROTESTORS: Black lives matter! Black lives matter! Black lives matter!
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: Trayvon Martin's death and the acquittal of George Zimmerman, of course, launched the Black Lives Matter movement. And has, you know, really launched some other changes in laws in various states around Stand Your Ground laws. And so there are some positive outcomes that come out of it, but they come out of it only because there were the negatives to begin with.
LESLIE KENDRICK: You mentioned changes to Stand Your Ground laws. Are there other changes in law that you’ve seen or that you think we should see?
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: You know, what the law can do — especially in a society where we view punishment and conviction as being really important — is actually hold officers accountable when they shoot unarmed African Americans. Of course, qualified immunity needs to absolutely go, and there's been a breakthrough in Colorado.
COLORADO’S LAW ENDED QUALIFIED IMMUNITY TO HOLD POLICE ACCOUNTABLE (NBC NEWS)
REPORTER: Over the summer, Colorado became the first state to end qualified immunity … meaning police officers can now be held personally liable for up to $25,000 dollars if their department determines they acted in bad faith.
RISA GOLUBOFF: Let me just pause here for a second. So, for listeners who might not know, qualified immunity is the legal doctrine that shields police officers and other public officials from individual liability for constitutional violations like excessive force, as long as the officer didn’t violate quote unquote “clearly established” law.
LESLIE KENDRICK: Angela, you’ve also argued that in the instances where criminal charges ARE filed against police officers, the jury selection process can impede justice.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: One of the things that I find really disturbing is I think so many of these cases end up with the exact wrong people sitting in the jury box. Why? Because one of the things is that you could say, I want to excuse somebody because they're familiar with the case, they've been reading the news, they've been following the case. Now, of course, right, we already know from polls, that, for example, African Americans are following those cases far more than white Americans are doing that. So, if that becomes a legitimate basis for excluding somebody from the jury, you've already disproportionately excluded African Americans.
RISA GOLUBOFF: So in our search to eliminate bias, we’re actually eliminating people who are maybe most affected or who care the most.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: And then whites or non-Blacks who are more race-conscious who are also following these cases and thinking about it are then getting excluded. So the people then who end up on the jury are the people who understand racism the least, people who understand race the least. I mean, they're precisely the wrong people to be sitting and hearing these cases and then making judgments.
THOUSANDS PROTEST AGAINST ACQUITTAL OF OFFICER WHO KILLED PHILANDO CASTILE (AL JAZEERA ENGLISH)
PROTESTORS: Whose streets? Our streets! Whose streets? Our Streets!
REPORTER: On the streets of Harlem in New York and in Minnesota, the reaction to the not guilty verdict was met with disbelief. After five days of deliberation, the jury found officer Jeronimo Yanez not guilty in the death of Philando Castile.
GRAND JURY DECLINES TO INDICT OFFICER IN TAMIR RICE SHOOTING (WBUR)
REPORTER: Ohio prosecutors will NOT bring charges against the police officers who shot and killed 12-year old Tamir Rice in Cleveland in December of 2014.
NEWS WRAP: ACQUITTAL IN FREDDIE GRAY CASE STIRS OUTRAGE (PBS NEWS HOUR)
REPORTER: Another police officer in Baltimore has been found not guilty in the 2015 death of a 25-year old Black man, Freddie Gray.
BRING MUSIC IN (Audioblocks - “Dancing on Fire”)
RISA GOLUBOFF: One of the things you talk a lot about in the papers that we've read for today, and I think is really important is the acquittals, right? So the officers who killed Freddie Gray or Philando Castile or Eric Garner or Tamir Rice — the list goes on — they’re acquitted. And so it's the double trauma I take you to be saying, and the double routineness of the trauma, not only that the killings happen, but that the perpetrators are not convicted and are not held to account. And so the killing is the first denigration of life, and then the acquittal is a reinforcement of that denigration.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: Absolutely. Perfectly said, and the acquittal, the legal outcomes, are incredibly damaging because it's the state, it’s government that's supposed to protect you, not protecting you, right? And so, it’s an official message that one does not belong, that one is not a real citizen. That is a hard message to take, day in and day out.
BRING MUSIC UP, THEN FADE OUT
RISA GOLUBOFF: A lot of the narrative lately has really been focused on police violence, violence committed by the state. But it’s not as simple as that, right? And both in past incidents with lynchings, there’s a mix of public and private actors and the same is often true today that the line between public and private isn’t that simple.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: Right. The father and son who killed Ahmaud Arbery. They viewed themselves as acting as sort of police, they're a sort of quasi-police.
INVESTIGATION INTO DEATH OF AHMAUD ARBERY HEATS UP (ABC NEWS)
ANCHOR: Investigators looking closely at surveillance video appearing to show the final moments of Ahmaud Arbery just before he was shot and killed by a father and son who said they were trying to make a citizen’s arrest.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: And I think they were enabled to see themselves as people who could act in that way in part because of our history of devaluing Black life.
RISA GOLUBOFF: It’s terrible.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: You know, George Zimmerman can be interviewed by the police that night and go home that night and not, not go to jail, right? The presumption is that he's right, that Trayvon Martin doesn't belong in the neighborhood and that George Zimmerman defended himself. And we know the presumption wouldn't have gone that way if it was the reverse, if it was a Black man who had shot a young white teenager. In some ways you could say the state is acting in that way too, because it’s in part this long history of these decisions that has enabled that.
RISA GOLUBOFF: So you're saying that even when a private actor is the one perpetrating the violence, the state may still be enabling it. And certainly the state is implicated when it fails to indict the perpetrator. So is the flip side true also, that when there is a conviction, the cultural trauma narrative changes and the state has acted in some kind of positive way?
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: So I don't think that the cases where there are convictions change the narrative. And I think it's in part because all of those cases reinforce the constraints, the expectations, the burdens that are put on people of color in our society. So, many of the cases are cases that involve officers of color, right, and white people who were shot, right? And so that's a totally different story, a totally different narrative.
LESLIE KENDRICK: You’ve also written that even when there’s ultimately a conviction, the way the trial is conducted and the arguments made by the defense and relayed in the media can add insult to injury.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: One of the things that always happens with these stories is there's always a demonization of the victim, the person who's killed.
RISA GOLUBOFF: You've talked about the case of Jordan Edwards, the 15-year old Black teenager from Dallas. He was leaving a party with his friends, and was shot to death by a police officer named Roy Oliver, who fired at the teens’ vehicle as they drove away.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: There was nothing. They couldn't find anything to demonize this kid. He was an honor student, clean, never been in trouble. The story the officer gave about them coming at him was false. I mean, there was just no other way they could construct the story. It was the angelic victim, right?
UNCUT: THE ‘SECOND TRIAL OF JORDAN EDWARDS’ (WFAA.COM)
REPORTER: The strongest witness against Roy Oliver turned out to be Jordan Edwards himself, who lived his life in such an exemplary fashion that though he died, his reputation survived …
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: And that very much fits in with this, I think, an understanding by many, Black people that you have to be this super-angelic victim in order for people to think that your killing can't be justified.
BRING MUSIC IN (Audioblocks - “Memories Gone”)
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: And then there's the case of Botham Jean.
LAWYERS DISGUSTED BY POLICE RELEASING SEARCH WARRANT FOR BOTHAM JEAN’S APARTMENT (FOX 4 DALLAS-FT. WORTH)
REPORTER: Shortly after the funeral ended, one of several search warrants connected to the investigation became public record. The list of some of the items seized from Botham Jean’s apartment including a small amount of marijuana.
LESLIE KENDRICK: For listeners who might not remember, he was the 26-year old accountant who was shot to death in his own apartment in Dallas. The perpetrator was an off-duty police officer who entered the apartment thinking it was her own.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: There was a little bit of an attempt to demonize him by saying that he smoked marijuana, but he was, you know, college educated, really professional.
RISA GOLUBOFF: It took a few days for Amber Guyger, the officer, to be arrested, but she WAS eventually found guilty of murder and sentenced to 10 years, which is a relatively rare outcome in these kinds of situations.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: The story afterwards was really about how his brother came over and hugged her, after she gets convicted, right?
BOTHAM JEAN’S BROTHER HUGS EX-OFFICER AMBER GUYGER AFTER SENTENCING (GUARDIAN NEWS)
BOTHAM’S BROTHER: I don’t know if this is possible, but can I give her a hug please? Please?
JUDGE: Yes.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: That becomes the story, this expectation that we're supposed to forgive immediately, right? There's very much a way in which the situations in which we've seen convictions don’t, don’t, um …
RISA GOLUBOFF: They reinforce the narrative rather than …
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: They reinforce rather than …
RISA GOLUBOFF: Yeah.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: Yeah, exactly.
BRING MUSIC UP, THEN FADE OUT
RISA GOLUBOFF: It's really striking when you talk about the origins of this scholarship and how personal they are to you. They come from your own experiences as a parent and as a Black person in our society. And as the first dean of color at B.U., it would seem like you're really in a unique position within the academy, within your school, within the legal profession to speak from that personal experience about racial animus and about the cultural trauma that results. But you've said that, you, and not only you, but colleagues of yours and mine who are also deans, who are women of color, have often felt hesitant about speaking out about these experiences and about the police killings. Can you talk a little bit about that? You know, where does the hesitance come from and how have you worked through it?
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: I think the hesitance comes from some of the unspoken — or maybe even spoken — things that people say about what they think is appropriate for a dean to do or not do or a dean to say or not say. People respond to you differently based upon your identity, right? And so people respond to women deans really quite differently than they respond to male deans, and people respond to, you know, Black women deans, right, differently than they respond to, you know, deans that are not Black women. And so everybody's reading everything you do through that lens too, so you're even more aware of how speaking out on particular issues are going to be read because it's you saying them, it’s coming out of your body versus someone else's body.
BRING MUSIC UP, THEN UNDER
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: Sometimes I worry about that.
BRING MUSIC UP, THEN UNDER
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: One of the things that I realized being Dean is that I have moved through my career without my colleagues being aware of how different my life was from theirs, as a professor — in the classroom, in a faculty meeting, in my personal life. I’m not a person who shares a lot. It’s pushed me to do that in a way, because I realize it's important because I have a voice and I have a platform and people will listen to me because I have this platform.
BRING MUSIC UP, THEN UNDER
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: And so it's important for me to speak for those who can't speak and be heard, or those who don't yet quite have the words to explain what's going on.
RISA GOLUBOFF: And I’m so glad that you do, and I know so many deans are.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: Oh, thank you. That’s very kind of you.
FADE MUSIC OUT
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: You know, it’s so funny the things that stick with you. When I was in law school, I had Catharine MacKinnon as a professor. She said something about how those who have the least to lose are always those who are the most frightened to take action, right?. And I always try to remind myself of that. You know, I wake up in the morning, it's one of the things I think about. You know, and the worse thing that’s going to happen to me if I am not a law dean — if I were to lose my job, because I did something that I believed in, I become a tenured law professor.
(Risa and Leslie laughing)
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: And that’s a better job than the job I have now, as far as I’m concerned. So if that's the worst thing that could happen to me, I should be using my voice in that way.
HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE MOVIE CLIP
ACTOR: I deliver people’s dreams …
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: One of my favorite movies is a movie called “Hollywood Shuffle” by Robert Townsend.
RISA GOLUBOFF: Great movie.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: Great movie.
RISA GOLUBOFF: There’s always work in the post office.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: There’s always work in the post office. Yeah.
HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE MOVIE CLIP
ACTOR: So if you can’t take pride in your job, remember: There’s always work at the post office.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: There’s always work as a tenured professor, so that's, you know, those are my lines I kind of repeat to myself when I need a little bit of courage.
FADE OUT MOVIE CLIP MUSIC
LESLIE KENDRICK: Angela, thank you so much for speaking with us today and sharing your story. We really appreciate talking with you.
BRING THEME MUSIC IN
RISA GOLUBOFF: Thank you Angela, this was amazing.
ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG: Thank you so much. Thank you.
BRING THEME MUSIC UP, THEN UNDER
RISA GOLUBOFF: That was Angela Onwuachi-Willig, an expert on cultural trauma, and dean of the Boston University School of Law.
BRING THEME MUSIC UP, THEN UNDER AND OUT
LESLIE KENDRICK: Well, that was just a fascinating and really important talk. It’s always such a pleasure to talk with Angela and I’m so glad that she could be a part of this season. And I love that we ended on her work as a dean.
RISA GOLUBOFF: It was really interesting to hear Angela talk about using her voice in a self-conscious way and using her position to amplify the voices of those who don't have as much opportunity to speak. And she's really done that as a dean. You know, she was one of several Black women deans who, in the wake of the protests this summer, created a deans’ Antiracist Clearinghouse. It's a website with an enormous amount of resources that was really a charge to all law schools. And I think even beyond that, all institutions for how to think about racial equity and how to do better in their institutions in doing so. It's a resource I've gone to, I know other deans have gone to, it continues to be a resource and you know, so Angela is articulating why it is, she is speaking in the way she speaks and, and I'm here to testify: She's actually doing it, right? And it's having an impact on the world.
LESLIE KENDRICK: Her focus on narratives and what narratives can do to a, to an individual and to a community, ties in with her own statements and the voice that she's putting out in the world, which also ties into the work of the Antiracist Clearinghouse, where she says, here's information and resources and tools that you can use to take action, and all of these things are related. And her work is so rich — both her scholarly work and her work as a dean — are all connected in these different ways.
RISA GOLUBOFF: I agree completely, Leslie. And I was thinking as you were talking about the importance of biography to this as well, right? So, it’s her personal narrative, plus her institutional role, plus her work as a scholar and it all has such synergies and it’s so important in this moment and she brings all of those hats together and she says, you know, I’m not a public person, I don’t usually share, but it does seem like her own life experience is so intertwined with both the way she sees the world as a scholar, the way she sees these moments of cultural trauma shaping not only her scholarship, but the larger public narratives, and then how it shapes her own work as a dean, and ALL of our work as a dean because she’s such an important voice within the legal academy.
BRING THEME MUSIC UP, THEN UNDER
LESLIE KENDRICK: That’s it for this episode of Common Law.
If you’d like to learn more about Angela Onwuachi-Willig’s work on cultural trauma, visit our website, Common Law Podcast Dot Com. You’ll also find all of our previous episodes, links to our Twitter feed and more.
RISA GOLUBOFF: We’ll be back in two weeks with Camilo Sánchez and Jolena Zabel of UVA’s School of Law, to talk about gender equity in the beautiful game.
CAMILO SÁNCHEZ: When you have these huge disparities that affect half of the world’s population, that’s something in which law and justice need to be involved.
RISA GOLUBOFF: We’re excited to share that with you. I’m Risa Goluboff.
LESLIE KENDRICK: And I’m Leslie Kendrick. See you next time!
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CREDITS: Do you enjoy Common Law? If so, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher — or wherever you listen to the show. That helps other listeners find us. Common Law is a production of the University of Virginia School of Law, and is produced by Emily Richardson-Lorente and Mary Wood.
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