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It is, truth be told, about white folks not wanting
people of color to share positions of power. It is about
white folks behaving badly when they have the purse strings
to do the right and fair thing but yet buckle in the knees
and select and choose those lawyer candidates who look like
them for available jobs.
It is about choosing a Mary or a John who comes from
your same fraternity or sorority or college or a past
neighborhood high school graduate with whom you can
ethnically identify with.
It is about the woefully poor selection process by which
people who hire, hire those who look like them and that
means black graduates from law schools with the same law
degree and credentials are chronically left out in the cold
wondering "what is wrong with me?"
The past and current hiring record in Lucas County for
legal jobs in the Public Defender Office (P.D.) or the Lucas
County Prosecutor's Office or the Juvenile Court
Prosecutor's Office or the Toledo Municipal Court
Prosecutor's Office or the law department of the City of
Toledo can be stated with two pithy words...appallingly bad.
Not poor. Not so-so. Not...it could be better. Not...we
have a ways to go...but bad...
appallingly bad.
In some of the city and county departments wherein they
use legal aides and/or attorneys, you will find no
minorities. Nada. Zip. None.
What is really egregious is the Pubic Defender's Office
in which their clientele base is approximately 50 percent
minorities coming before the judges to be sentenced.
Yet, the Public Defenders Office has no black attorneys
(and, save for one who recently died and one who moved away
many years ago, they have had none for decades).
Save for one here and there over the past 30 years, The
P.D. office is one of the worst hiring offenders. They have
no shame. Sure, they will come now and then to the Thurgood
Marshall Law Association meetings and grin and smile and
tell us to contact them with applicants, but …
The but is that they do nothing to change or correct the
culture of their dismal hiring record and this is so even
when minority candidates apply for the few and far between
job openings in the P.D. office.
Having been a lawyer since 1977, I have had first-hand
viewing knowledge of the above-named departments being
practically lily white...and the powers that be, simply
could not give a bucket of warm spit about the inequities in
their midst.
Why? They simply do not give a tinker's damn even
though they are disingenuously eloquent in providing reasons
why they can not hire minority candidates and, for that,
they trot out the tried and true usual suspects: (1) can't
find qualified candidates. Problem: they don't look for them
(2) we have budget woes and can't hire at this time.
Problem: when there weren't budget woes, you didn't hire
even then.
You can count on two hands over the past 25 years, the
number of blacks and other minorities who were allowed to
grace the courtrooms of this county or city as prosecutors
or serve as public defenders or serve the county or city law
departments as lawyers. Names available upon request.
And what makes this scandal, scandalous is that these
positions are funded by tax-payer funds. Yet the persons who
make these biased hiring decisions treat the tax funds as
their personal pocket money and hire whom they want without
accountability.
Advertising for vacancies? Are you on drugs? No, they do
not post the job openings
for all to see in any public media outlets. They pass the
word around to their own cronies and inner circles of best
buds and those are the ones who get the jobs.
The few minorities who have cracked that glass ceiling
of hiring did it in conjunction with an inside person who
had a conscience to know that equality means employing
people other than from your own clan or tribe.
What is the pernicious effect of this closed system of
hiring? Simple. It is tough to recruit black students to
come to the law school here in Toledo because they can see
that upon graduation, the job market, other than entering
into a private practice, is a closed shop for all intents
and purposes.
The other effect? When people of color appear before
judges and they do not see black prosecutors or are not
represented by a black P.D., they can think that the system
is stacked against them and there is no hope for them.
Perception is reality.
The current system by which people of color are hired
or not hired by the city, state and county agencies that
employ lawyers has made and is currently making a statement
that black lawyers need not apply.
Has the white county or city bar associations issued
any manifestos about this glaring practice of a decades old
track record of not hiring people of color as lawyers? No.
Has anyone chided the Public Defenders Office for
their abysmal hiring record for black attorneys? No. Have
any of their funding sources raised their eyebrows about why
there are so few, "flies in the milk?" No.
Do the parties that hire attorneys for these public
tax payer paid legal slots, do they have any shame about
what they do and how they do it? Apparently none.
Yet, they want to give the impression that all is well and
they are doing their level best to right this crooked
playing field. Lies...lies and more lies. The proof is in
the pudding.
You want to see bald-faced segregation in Toledo? You
want to see "legal" apartheid in its finest form? Simply go
to the P.D. office and check out what lawyers have nappy
heads. Go to the Lucas County Prosecutor's Office and see
how many lawyers are wearing an Afro.
Go to One Government Center legal department and check
out who there is darker than a glass of milk. Go to the
Juvenile Court or the Domestic Relations Court and see how
many magistrates or referees are black. Note: in the
Domestic Relations Court, the last black referee came out of
there over 25 years ago! Name available upon request.
And when you do that and when you check out the paucity
of the hiring of black lawyers in the past 20-40 years in
this city, then tell me with a straight face that all is
well in Toledo.
Contact Lafe Tolliver at Tolliver@Juno.com
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