Workforce Language Services

With minorities representing less than ten percent of the nation’s legal community, a recent educational program in Rochester aimed to strategize how to increase those numbers.  The host groups used role plays to highlight situations that show a lack of cultural competence.

Members of the hosting groups also performed a few skits that highlighted racial problems in the legal workplace, including one scene where a white interviewer assumed that a minority job candidate had “managed to go to college and to law school, overcoming so much.”

After a look of confusion, the candidate replied: “Well, I suppose. But nearly everyone else from Pittsford High School has done pretty much the same,” which drew a big laugh from the audience.

The skits allowed the audience to take an amusing look at racial ignorance in the legal community, but Brown followed the skits with a sobering announcement: Each was an exaggerated example of something that had happened at a local law firm or legal entity in the past year.

During the program, the need to support educational achievement starting in elementary school emerged as an important factor in assisting minorities to be successful later on. 

For the entire article, click here.