Our own guestblogger Diane Lucas is interviewed in an article about Harvard Law students’ reactions to Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court nomination. Diane talks about some of the racial issues at Harvard, and Kagan’s response (or lack thereof):
“It was blatantly sexist and racist,” Lucas said. “They depicted a number of women of color in the play, and one woman who is African-American, very intelligent, very well-spoken, they depicted her as being a ghetto girl from the ‘hood’ and they made her talk in ebonics and made it so that you could hardly understand what she was saying.”
Lucas said another African-American woman was depicted as promiscuous, and a Latina woman who in reality spoke English with an American accent was depicted as speaking no English. She said several students walked out.
But Lucas says when she and other students asked Kagan to issue a formal apology, set up diversity training and hire a diversity director, Kagan refused. Kagan defended the parody as students’ freedom of speech. From that, Lucas concluded that Kagan shirked her responsibility to make Harvard Law School a more racially sensitive place.