Pursuing Possibilities With Change
By Robert J. Spagnoletti

When my oldest son Hunter was five, he came home from school upset about something one of his classmates, Jeremy, had said to him. “Jeremy told me that I’m black. I told him that I’m not black,” Hunter contested. “I’m brown. And Jeremy said that you’re white. I told him that he was wrong. You’re not white, you’re orange.”

And so began my first father–son discussion on race. It was an interesting talk about the color of a person’s skin and how that fact is sometimes used to put people into categories. It was a bittersweet moment. For five years, Hunter had seen the world only in shades of orange and brown. Now he was introduced to the concept of black and white, and I wondered whether his view of race would change how he interacted with me and the world around him.

A few years later, Hunter, my partner Bernard, and I were talking about who was president of the United States when each of us was born. When Bernard said that Lyndon Johnson was the president at the time of his birth, Hunter asked, “Linda Johnson? Was she black?”

Hunter, now a teenager, certainly knows a lot more about what it means to be a young, black man in Washington, D.C., and, thankfully, in presidential history. His view of race, however, and the role it plays in his life is very different from what it was for my generation. He has grown up only knowing life as part of an interracial family. He has aunts, uncles, and cousins who are white, black, Asian, and French-Canadian. His friends are largely biracial. He has grown up in a city where there are multiracial role models in business, local government, education, and sports. Through all of this, he has largely held on to the view that skin color is just that—the color of one’s skin and not the measure of one’s character.

Recently, I was asked to address the recipients of the Frederick B. Abramson Memorial Foundation Public Service Fellowship Awards. Fred grew up in Harlem, New York, received a scholarship to Yale University, and graduated from the University of Chicago Law School. He served as D.C. Bar president in 1985–86 and was a great mentor to many young lawyers. The foundation appropriately was created to honor and support fresh law school graduates who pledge to work in various areas of public service, sacrificing the big salaries each of them could earn at Washington’s prestigious law firms.

The awards ceremony, held on November 5, 2008, still was buzzing from a post-election hangover. I thought I would make my standard “go-out-and-do-good” speech, but suddenly I was struck by the enormity of the moment. Less than 24 hours earlier, the nation had elected its first African-American president. Politics aside, Barack Obama’s victory was historic and inspiring. We the people took a giant step forward, leaving our history of slavery and segregation a little further behind. We also sent our children—yours and mine—a very powerful message. American children will grow up knowing life with the reality of a black president.

It occurred to me, as I spoke, that Obama’s accomplishment and Hunter’s perspective on the importance of race were made possible, in large part, by lawyers such as Fred Abramson and those who served before me. Throughout this country’s history, lawyers have been instrumental in originating and executing change. We have worked to desegregate schools, open polling places, and ensure free and fair elections. Lawyers have taken up the cause of those who were denied access to public accommodations, who were made to sit in the back of the bus, and who were refused admission to graduate schools. Lawyers have helped craft major civil rights legislation and devise legal strategies to take on institutional racism.

As I congratulated the awardees, I wondered how this new generation of lawyers will change history. Although we elected an African-American president, discrimination—in all its ugly forms—still lives in our government, schools, and churches. How will these new lawyers lead our country to another Obama-like victory? How will they pursue economic and environmental justice that continues to elude us? What contributions will they make to create a warless world? And how will my generation of lawyers and those more senior continue to shape our justice system and protect our democracy?

It is fair to say that most of us, young and old, will not have the opportunity to draft major civil rights legislation, negotiate Middle East peace, or champion the right to decent and affordable health care and housing for all Americans. But we all can influence significant change through smaller, individual actions.

By representing a family about to lose its home, we very well may help foster an environment that will enable the eldest daughter to pursue her love of science and eventually find a cure for cancer; by defending a youthful protester from criminal prosecution, perhaps we can remove what otherwise might be an obstacle for that person to become our nation’s first Asian-American ambassador to the United Nations; and by protecting an engineer’s new and seemingly ineffectual invention, we might ultimately pave the way for the realization of unprecedented fuel efficiency.

Yes, by flapping our butterfly wings we can create tiny changes in the atmosphere that eventually will give rise to the possibility of anything, such as electing an African-American president of the United States.