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IMPLICIT, BUT STRONG, BARRIERS

Bruce Ishimatsu, a partner at Loeb & Loeb, had what he called a watershed moment in his professional life several years ago. He was at a meeting organized for Asian Pacific Americans, and a white, male speaker from Texas was trying to break the ice.

That speaker joked that it was awkward to speak in front of an audience that was so different than him � since he was tall, and not good at math.

“I was ashamed, embarrassed and shocked,” Ishimatsu said. No one in the audience voiced any complaint about the speaker’s comment.

“Why do we let comments like that slide by?” Ishimatsu asked members of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association at a conference in Los Angeles last week. “If he were in front of an African-American or Latino audience, would they have put up with it?”

Ishimatsu’s anecdote launched a discussion on race and the law, attended by dozens of NAPABA members, and others.

Among the speakers was Jerry Kang, a UCLA law professor whose lively presentation clearly had the audience engaged.

Kang presented research on the creation of racial perceptions, and how they affect interactions with minorities. While many people will self-report that they support racial equality, tests that examine more subtle behaviors reveal otherwise.