The Michael Jackson pill: equality, race, and culture.

• Author: Culp, Jerome McCristal, Jr.
• Position: Visions of Equality: The Future of Title VII

I want a new drug

One that does what it should

One that won't feel too bad

One that won't feel too good

I want a new drug

One with no doubt

One that won't make me talk too much

or make my face break out(1)

1. The Chronicle Of The Michael Jackson Pill(2)

   I was leaving Langdell Hall, after having feasted too fervently at my fifteenth law school reunion, when I noticed what looked like a very ancient document pushed down in the trash can that litters the small entrance to the main reading room of Langdell. The ancient scroll seemed out of place so carelessly thrown away outside the world's largest law school library. I picked it up and was surprised to discover that there, very near Derrick Bell's former office, I had found another of the scrolls that Professor Bell's friend Geneva had revealed to him before she joined the celestial curia.(3) What was this wondrous document doing in Langdell Hall? Maybe it was some further message from Geneva Crenshaw that had been dropped there for me to discover. I rushed to find Professor Bell to tell him of my good luck.

   As I approached the office that had once belonged to Professor Bell, I noticed a group of six black men standing together in the hallway. Much to my surprise and delight, I recognized among them the five faculty members at Harvard Law School who are both black and male. I know of Scott Brewer and his work as careful thinker and philosopher.(4) David Wilkins is a friend and had even once been an excellent student in one of the undergraduate economics classes I taught as a graduate student at Harvard.(5) Charles Ogletree(6) and Chris Edley(7) had been contemporaries of mine at Harvard Law School, and I had read with increasing interest the powerful epistles from Randall Kennedy about race and the law, which are now sprinkled in the important law reviews and symposia.(8) The sixth man was not Professor Bell, nor did I know him from Harvard, but he nonetheless looked familiar and unmistakably professorial(9) Seeing this group gathered there confirmed the only possible interpretation of my discovery - I had been given the opportunity to share it with those at Harvard who would most appreciate its significance and, perhaps, explain it to me. It could not simply be by chance that I had discovered this document now.

   "Hey guys! What are you doing here? " I asked, chuckling secretly to myself about my discovery. However - as I was about to say some new version of "Guess what I found?" - I noticed that they all held scrolls that looked markedly like mine. Without an additional word we all opened our scrolls to find identical statements:

   Dr. Michael Jackson, a doctor educated at Motown University and now a professor of medical appearance at Hollywood University, has invented a pill that if taken by black people will remove all vestiges of being black. Black features will disappear from black people who take the pill, and they will be given a random selection of names that white people in America have. Black speech patterns and ways of organizing expression will go away. With respect to every outside appearance, all black people who take the pill will become white.

   The legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has passed Massachusetts General Law 1619.28, requiring all black residents of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to take the Michael Jackson Pill. Black residents who do not take the pill are subject to fines of up to 2,000. Sonny Flynn, speaker of the Massachusetts Assembly, said, "This bill will for all time remove the vestiges of slavery that have plagued this great commonwealth." The NAACP objects to the application of this statute to black residents of Massachusetts and asks the five black Harvard faculty members and Professor Derrick Bell to write a brief and argue the case. Representative King, one of three African Americans in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, has pointed out that evidence suggests that white people who take the pill will become black. He argues that black is beautiful and that we ought to make all white people take the pill. Marjorie Jones, a white professor of political economy at the Kennedy School, in a widely cited argument, has noted that it is cheaper to have black people take the pill and that the problems with race are basically confined to the unfortunate segment that is black. "We, the white citizens of Massachusetts, are willing to welcome black people to that great white melting pot," she adds.

   We were all instantly removed to a conference room nearby, with Derrick Bell at one end of the table and at the other an empty chair. Several of the faculty began to talk simultaneously when a deep but very feminine voice, belonging unmistakably to Geneva Crenshaw, interrupted ...

   Geneva Crenshaw: Excuse me - Excuse me. I see that you are all here. I have called all of you here today to discuss with Derrick how this latest chronicle ought to come out. The question is whether black people should take this pill. Can we be saved by a pill that transforms all black people into white people? Derrick has been making trouble by questioning whether some of you even want to be white, but Dr. Jackson has given all black people that opportunity.

   Professor Bell. Gee - I think I need to know a little bit more about this pill.

   Geneva Crenshaw: You mean you want to know whether you still will have rhythm after you take the pill.

   Professor Culp: We all know your penchant for hyperbole, Ms. Crenshaw, but hasn't this description of the pill been too simplistic? Eliminating blackness may exact a heavy price, and personally, I like being black.

   Geneva Crenshaw: I don't know who you are - though there must be a reason for you to be here - but the point is so simple that a third-year law student could see it without the benefit of Emmanuel's. You take the pill and you aren't black anymore - though some of you may have to take it twice. The pill doesn't eliminate class or other characteristics, but I understand that Dr. Phyllis Schafly is working on a pill that will remove gender.

   Professor Bell: I think we ought to start with a vote to see how many people think that all black people ought to be required to take this pill.

   [The black male faculty look around at each other. Some raise their hands - most of them slowly. Others look disturbed but do not raise their hands.

   Professor Culp keeps raising and lowering his hand

   One by one they each start to speak, asking questions of Geneva Crenshaw and of one another and beginning a debate that continues for some time. (Unfortunately, not all of this conversation can be chronicled here.) After listening to his compatriots carry on for a while, the strange-yet-familiar professor joins the conversation ...!

   Professor Not-Professor-Bell.: I don't understand your ambivalence, Professor Culp. This pill washes away all the manifestations of racial difference. You have pointed out in your writing the importance of race as a cause of our nation's problems. Race will be no more, and therefore racial problems will be no more.

   Professor Culp: I'm sorry, but the issue is still not clear to me. I gain from being black. My parents have strength of character that aids me in my work. The history of my family has an importance that would be erased if there were no culture or language or notion of place that was connected with being black.

   Professor Not-Professor-Bell: Race is simply a cultural creation. As Professor Kendall Thomas of Columbia Law School is fond of saying, black people are raced.10 The pill removes the power of white people to race us.

   Professor Culp: I understand that we are raced by society, but culture means something positive to me. People are raced, but people are also cultured and the two are interdependent. There are, therefore, positive and negative sides to the issue of race. Black people invent themselves as black people through culture and history.

   Professor Not-Professor-Bell: We're all lawyers here, not cultural critics. Race will not matter in the job market when black people have taken the pill and become white. Being black doesn't make one a better janitor or a better law professor. Culture is a social creation: with this pill, those of us who want to love jazz or basketball or Toni Morrison or Gwendolyn Brooks can do so without the handicap of difference. Race doesn't matter, so taking it away shouldn't matter either. Indeed - what we want to eliminate are the transient and unimportant things that get in the way of equality.

   Professor Culp: I'm not sure that race is so easily disconnected from our notion of what a law professor is. I was pushing a garbage cart toward my office one evening when the child of two of my black colleagues, Gwynn Swinson and Percy Luney, asked me whether I had to do a second job. My colleagues' child understood that at least at Duke, what you do is closely connected with your race. Black people clean and wash toilets, and if they are special like her parents, they may get to teach at a law school. Her fear - consistent with her experience - was that all black people secretly had to be cleaning people, doing some black job as well as a white job.

   Geneva Crenshaw: You may be right, Professor Culp, but not completely. You see race from the patriarchal perspective of being a black male. This very male room may be willing to take the pill without understanding the implications of culture. However, gender and other notions of identity cannot be separated from race, and culture holds gender and race together. Black men always think that if their apparent problem were solved - if only they weren't black - then the problems of black people would go away. The point is that black problems are more than simply race as defined by what black men are concerned about. Maybe fewer people would have their hands up if there were more black women or other women of color in the room - people who understand that oppression is a multiple-aspect condition.

   Professor...