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| Professor Jerome McCristal Culp, Jr. Courtesy of Duke University. |
Like most students in law school, I was concerned about brass tacks-mastering the Black Letter law, and getting the best grades I could earn. Scholarship, and other activities and engagements my professors were involved in outside the classroom were not first and foremost in my mind. I'll admit, it wasn't until later, after I became a law professor, that I began to fully comprehend Professor Culp's remarkable career and scholarly contributions. Professor Culp was the first African-American law professor to earn tenure at Duke Law School. More importantly, outside the walls of Duke, Professor Culp was a tribal elder and founding voice in the Black Legal Scholarship, Critical Race Theory, and Lat-Crit Theory Movements. Over the years, I've read most, if not all, of Professor Culp's scholarship published in law reviews and journals. Professor Culp was a wonderful writer and thinker. Sadly, Professor Culp passed away in 2004, at the young age of fifty-three (53) years old. Despite his relative youth at the time of his passing, Professor Culp's mark on legal scholarship is indelible. In fact, the premier scholarship award given out to the best and brightest professors at Lat-Crit conferences is named the Jerome McCristal Culp, Jr. Award, to pay remembrance to who and what he meant to so many.
In one of his more compelling articles, published in 1994 in the Michigan Law Review, Professor Culp explores the fallout of what it would mean if the state of Massachusetts compelled all of it's Black citizens to take a pill, the Michael Jackson pill, under penalty of stiff fines, that would remove all vestiges of being Black. Society would be completely White. In Professor Culp's well-crafted narrative, the five (5) then African-American members of the Harvard Law School faculty are approached by the NAACP to brief and argue the case against the application of this statute to Black citizens in Massachusetts. This is all I'll tell you about Professor Culp's article, like a great movie I don't want to spoil the final scenes!
Here's a link to Professor Culp's article:
I encourage you to read it. What would America look like if we compelled all African-Americans to take a pill to erase their blackness?
I would like express my appreciation for Prof. Culp’s creativity. I don’t know who, besides legal professionals, would ever read this article but I fear that if word got out, if a pill truly existed, there would be a great push for not just Massachusetts but the entire country to demand its use. And I also fear that too many Black people, like some of the characters in the article (like some of the characters in Trump’s camp) would agree to its use.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of eliminating racism by eliminating Blackness tends to lead one to believe that racism is only a white vs. black issue, as though no other group of people experience this situation. Let me touch on some of the articles arguments/discussions for a minute before I discuss Blackness.
The characters’ discussion about a poverty pill is ridiculous. Who decides when someone is no longer living in poverty? What does poverty mean? Let’s assume it’s money. Is there a specific dollar amount? Is a person no longer poor when his/her basic needs are met? Who decides what a person needs? Is it food: three squares and snacks based on the food pyramid; what if I’m a vegetarian/vegan, have food allergies, food preferences? What about housing: will my basic needs be met as long as I have a roof over my head; does the neighborhood or size matter? Clothes: just the basics to meet the climatic needs of the wearer; are the number of articles limited; do the outfits need to coordinate; fit the way the wearer wants? Then there’s transportation: is access to public transportation sufficient; access to a car (used, new, own, making payments/leased); if there are 5 children and two parents is one vehicle with 7 or 8 seats or two a vehicles with 4 or 5 seats each; if they have no children and are single, would a bike or motorcycle suffice? After a person takes this pill and miraculously all their needs are met so that they are no longer poverty stricken, does that mean that the people who were not poverty stricken and never needed to take the pill will never look down on them and treat these pill takers poorly because they needed the pill in the first place? If a poor person refuses to take the pill, will it be deemed against the law and they are fined for not confirming? How would that poor person pay the fine?
A $2000 fine for refusal to comply means that it is against the law to be Black. Is the fine assessed as a punishment for the “just” Americans to have to put up with African Americans? Do other non-white people have to take the pill? All other races face degrees of discrimination from Whites. Will other minorities declared illegal? If a person refuses to take the pill and is fined, is it just a one-time fine? Do they now have to carry a card indicating that the fine has previously been paid so that they aren’t reassessed? What happens when they always whites find out that someone is newly white? Will they not at all care that they used to be something unacceptable? Will their previous Blackness/lawlessness be forgiven?
The very idea of a pill to rid myself of my Blackness is abhorrent - as though my Blackness is abhorrent. The problem isn’t my Blackness or racism as a whole. It isn’t my, gender, weight, sexuality, age, disability, income, social status or anything else that might set me apart from someone else. The problem is discrimination of any kind for any reason. The pill removes the accountability from the person/group of persons who choose to find fault in another person or group based on their differences. This is another example (thankfully fictional) of a small-minded, mean-spirited person or group of persons trying to inflict their power and oppression on people to lift themselves up. They see no fault in their ideology or actions. They only seek to blame and punish others for attempting to make they grow when they find growth too difficult.