Mismatched or Maligned?: A Race Crit's Qualitative Analysis of African American Males in Law School

Abstract

As a prosecutor for approximately a dozen years, I tried to implement the judicial ideology of blind justice. My interdisciplinary approach connecting law with education and cultural studies has led me to believe that another kind of blindness – colorblind – is both unhelpful and unconscionable. Researchers, such as Professor Richard Sander and Thomas Sowell, have argued that there is often a “mismatch” between African American students and their institutions of higher education, resulting in lower levels of success for such students. Another implication of the mismatch theory is that affirmative action policies, that may have helped these students gain admission to top-tier universities, are failing because the students are not “succeeding” at these institutions or after graduation.My study’s purpose is to investigate, compare, and contrast the experiences of African American former law school students attending less-selective and more-selective law schools. An integral part will be a consideration of their “costs” and “benefits” suggested by the mismatch theorist. This will be a qualitative study, focusing on case studies of approximately 10 African American law school graduates but also including approximately 6 members of faculty and administration. I will conduct in-depth, structured interviews with study participants to gain an understanding of their law school and post-graduation experiences. Thereafter, the interviews will be coded, sorted, and triangulated for validity. Other sources of information will include interviews with faculty, the students’ undergraduate and law school grade point averages, law school aptitude test scores, rankings within their schools, job opportunities, experiences taking the bar examination, and career satisfaction.My primary aim is to provide a rich, contextualized, and nuanced picture of each participant’s law school and post-graduation experiences, so that we may better understand the applicability and accuracy of the mismatch hypothesis.