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Critical Race Theory made me a better lawyer
Christopher Punongbayan is a lawyer and Executive Director of ChangeLawyers. He completed the Critical Race Studies program at UCLA Law School.
I am not an academic. I don’t even work in education. I’m just a lawyer. And at one point, I was a lonely law student burdened by imposter syndrome. Critical Race Theory came into my life at the precise moment I needed it the most.
I began law school weeks before 9/11, and I felt like I had made the biggest mistake of my life. I never should have left New York, where I was doing social justice work through my day job. I should have been there to help the community rebuild. Instead, I was 3000 miles away in Los Angeles studying contracts and civil procedure.
I tried my best to make peace with law school, but law school wasn’t designed for someone like me. I had no professors of color in my first year; I was one of a small number of BIPOC students on campus; and none of the classes made an effort to even acknowledge race.
For instance, I remember learning about People v. Goetz in criminal law class. The case involved a white man who shot and wounded 4 Black kids on a New York City subway after one of them had asked him for $5. The court dismissed the charges against Goetz because he had a “reasonable” belief that his use of force was justified.
