The vestiges of racism can be seen all around us. The murder of George Floyd is the most recent incident of a black man being killed by the police. But this time it feels different. This time, people are standing up differently. Not all have the language or the voice but they have the desire to see beyond the media's narrative, to be allies in a struggle that many of us have been fighting for a lifetime.

Cries for justice — legal, social and racial — pepper social media posts and leave the lips of protestors. Our profession is heralded as the profession responsible to uphold and protect the rule of law and many look to us to answer the question, Why?

Explaining systemic oppression and racism is not easy. It takes time, knowledge and energy to explain why we continue to see the vestiges of slavery; why our laws were created, applied and interpreted against blacks; why redlining, housing segregation, police brutality, employment discrimination and educational inequality continue to exist. How can we answer those questions when our profession helped to create and continues to support these systems of oppression? Perhaps we cannot tackle every system but we can start by looking inward at the ways in which our profession continues to be centered around whiteness.

The American Bar Association (ABA) was moved forward by members of the Connecticut Bar Association (CBA) to "to advance the science of jurisprudence, promote the administration of justice and uniformity of legislation throughout the Union, uphold the honor of the profession of law and encourage cordial intercourse among the members of the American Bar." The Founding of the American Bar Association, Simeon E. Baldwin (ABA J. 695 1917).

The goals were laudable and the ABA has been a significant leader in promoting and upholding the rule of law, access to justice, professionalism, diversity and inclusion and educating the public about the law. But we cannot ignore that in the early years, the organization intentionally centered regulations around whiteness and maleness. As law schools sought to meet the growing need of prospective students, in particular women, black, Jewish and other ethnic minorities, the ABA intervened. Every point of entry into the profession was regulated by the ABA; the creation and existence of law schools (eliminating night school, for profit schools, black law schools and rural law schools), educational standards for entry into law schools (preventing those denied access to formal education from attending, and fostering the reliance on biased admissions tests like the LSAT) and setting criteria for admission to the bar (eliminating apprenticeship and diploma privilege). There is no surprise that we have a diversity problem in the profession when the history of our profession is rooted in discrimination. It is time to make meaningful change.

Recognizing the homogeneity of our profession is no longer enough. We must examine the ways in which we continue to perpetuate the exclusionary roots of the profession and the ways in which holding on to tradition and outdated regulations perpetuate the narrative that our profession is by and for whites only. It is time to dismantle the system that has privileged all of us. It is time to check our gatekeepers so that all have the opportunity to access the system. It is time to break one of the many U.S. systems that privilege one group of people to the detriment of another.