No one has ever accused me of having a quiet voice. I was born with the kind of volume that resulted in repeated requests to keep my voice down from preschool through, well, yesterday. My biggest pet peeve is being “shushed”; it makes me irate and ashamed at the same time. I am loud, yes, but that has always been my superpower.
Yet, as a woman of color and a criminal defense attorney for the past 10 years, I have found myself unable to use my superpower when advocating for myself. When a judge compared me to Gandhi in open court and proceeded to tell me I must be good at math because “my people were good at math,” I silently nodded hoping my cringeworthy fake smile would not harm my client seated next to me. When a court reporter told me in a full courtroom she could not understand me because of my “accent,” I murmured a quiet apology rather than snap back that I did not realize it was so hard to understand people who speak “Valley Girl.”
When you are a deputy public defender, your sole job is to zealously advocate for the client seated next to you. I take pride in that role. Time and time again, however, I have remained silent at these slights in open court because I feared doing otherwise would harm my clients’ interests. Protecting my clients’ needs meant ignoring my own. Admittedly, it can be exhausting and overwhelming at times; it is also not at all unique to the experiences of many women and women of color who navigate these spaces.
That is why in 2019 when I was asked by the ABA Women in Criminal Justice Task Force to provide testimony on my experience as a woman of color in the criminal legal field at one of the Listening Sessions in San Francisco, I leapt at the chance. However, I decided (with the help of extremely wise counsel from my mother) that this was not a time for me to “air my grievances.” It was time to use this platform I had been given to provide the data to back my working hypothesis—that as a woman and a woman of color in the criminal legal field, I could hardly be alone in feeling frustrated at being silenced.
To confirm my hypothesis, I decided to invite other women in my office to share their experiences because if I harnessed the collective voices of the women and women of color, we could all be heard. We could bring our truths to light and be given the stage they deserved. It was time to give each woman in my office an opportunity to speak up about these microaggressions, both inside the courtroom and sometimes with our own colleagues.
With the help of my scientist sister, I created an internal online survey for my colleagues that asked a range of questions about their thoughts on recruitment, retention, and promotion of women and women of color and about their experiences in the courtroom and office navigating the complexities of being women criminal defense attorneys. The survey was multiple choice with the option to provide longer answers if a participant wished. When I sent out the survey, I was worried no one would respond—but a whopping 65 percent replied. Each person shared their candid responses about their experiences.
After the survey closed, I conducted a follow-up focus group. I invited participants to lunch and asked questions based on the survey responses. The women who attended shared openly their concerns about career mobility, balancing demanding trial-oriented careers they loved with family obligations, and the common experience by some of feeling sidelined and silenced based upon their status as women and women of color. As I listened to my colleagues, I noticed that the forum allowed them to have what we all needed: space to have their voices heard and validation that their experiences mattered.
With the permission of my office leadership, who openly encouraged me to do so, I took my “study” to the ABA listening session. When it was my turn to speak, I pulled a huge black binder filled with tabbed pages out of my bag and placed it on the table. It was my turn to amplify the voices of my colleagues who were waiting to be heard.
I began reporting the data and giving anecdotes about our collective experiences as women and women of color defenders. I shared the strong voices of my colleagues by using my own. It felt freeing in a way that I had not ever experienced. My voice grew louder and back to the volume that I have come to love and own. As one of the participants in my “study” stated, “[J]ust listen to us—we have something to say, and it has value.”
I have not looked back since that August 2019 listening session. After that session, I met with leadership in my office to discuss my results and talk about ways to continue to open paths for women and women of color in our office. The ABA Women in Criminal Justice Task Force invited me to join their Advisory Board and co-chair the Data Committee. Along with three other incredible women of color defense attorneys I met at the listening sessions, I co-founded the Women of Color Defender Network where women of color defense attorneys from all over California come together monthly in support and solidarity.
By harnessing the collective voices of my colleagues and giving them the audience they deserved, I regained my own voice in the process. It is loud, it is powerful, and it is here to stay.
