Challenged X 3: The Stories of Women of Color Who Teach Legal Writing
![handle is hein.journals/berkwolj29 and id is 307 raw text is: Challenged X 3:
The Stories of Women of Color Who Teach
Legal Writing
Lorraine K. Bannait
INTRODUCTION
Much of what has been written concerning the experience of women of
color in the legal academy has focused on tenured or tenure-track women of
color who teach doctrinal courses. I speak from a somewhat different place-as a
woman of color who teaches Legal Writing and who, like most faculty who
teach Legal Writing, is untenured.1 Of course, I nod my head with recognition as
I read the stories shared by tenured or tenure-track women of color who teach
2
doctrinal courses, including challenges they face from students and colleagues.
t Lorraine K. Bannai is Director of the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality and
Professor of Legal Skills at Seattle University School of Law. This article is based on a
presentation made at the symposium sharing perspectives on the book Presumed
Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, sponsored by the
Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice on March 8, 2013, at the University of
California, Berkeley, School of Law. I wish to thank the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law &
Justice for organizing that symposium, Carmen GonzAlez for encouraging my involvement
in the symposium, and Blake Kumabe and Damon Pang for their valuable research
assistance. I am also indebted to my colleague and friend Anne Enquist for her work
regarding the status of Legal Writing faculty, and to her and Kathryn Bannai for their support
and assistance in the writing of this essay.
1. Few authors address the unique experience of women of color who teach Legal Writing. I
am grateful to Teri McMurtry-Chubb for her ground-breaking article discussing the
experiences of women of color who teach Legal Writing. See Teri A. McMurtry-Chubb,
Writing at the Master's Table: Reflections on Theft, Criminality, and Otherness in the Legal
Writing Profession, 2 DREXEL L. REv. 41 (2009). This essay is intended to build on her work
in that article. Other authors have also noted the unique challenges faced by women of color
who teach Legal Writing. See, e.g., Pamela Edwards, Teaching Legal Writing as Women's
Work: Life on the Fringes of the Academy, 4 CARDOZO WOMEN'S L.J. 75, 92-94 (1997);
Deborah Jones Merritt & Barbara F. Reskin, Sex, Race, and Credentials: The Truth About
Affirmative Action in Law Faculty Hiring, 97 COLUM. L. REv. 199, 258-60 (1997) (noting
that both white and minority women are more likely than men to teach skills courses).
2. See, e.g., Margalynne J. Armstrong & Stephanie M. Wildman, Working Across Racial Lines
in a Not-So-Post-Racial World, in PRESUMED INCOMPETENT: THE INTERSECTIONS OF RACE
AND CLASS FOR WOMEN IN ACADEMIA 224 (Gabriella Gutidrrez y Muhs, Yolanda Flores
Niemann, Carmen G. GonzAlez & Angela P. Harris eds., 2012) [hereinafter PRESUMED
INCOMPETENT]; Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Silence of the Lambs, in PRESUMED
INCOMPETENT, supra, at 142; Ruth Gordon, On Community in the Midst of Hierarchy (and
BERKELEY JOURNAL OF GENDER, LAW & JUSTICE
275](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/berkwolj29&div=15&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Challenged X 3: The Stories of Women of Color Who Teach Legal Writing
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most