Racial Justice Speaker Series/Aoki Center Presents: Dean Angela Onwauchi-Willig "The Trauma of Injustice"

Racial Justice Speaker Series - Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Dean, Boston University School of Law "The Trauma of Injustice" Co-sponsored by the Aoki Center "In this talk, I build upon the arguments I made about cultural trauma in my article, The Trauma of the Routine: Lessons on Cultural Trauma from the Emmett Till Trial, which was published in Sociological Theoryin 2016. In Trauma of the Routine, I argued that, for certain subordinated groups such as Blacks and under certain circumstances, cultural trauma narratives can emerge not only out of an the interruption of the unexpected or shocks to the systems, but also out of the routine—a continuation of what is considered to be an expected subordination, usually through law or government sanction. To do so, I examined the responses of black Americans as a whole to the acquittal of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till’s murderers. Specifically, I relayed how a longstanding history of discrimination and injustice had left Blacks in 1955, including Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of Emmett Till, with the expectation that the two murderers of her son on trial, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, would be acquitted, and I explained how the social meaning of that acquittal for Blacks emerged through a cultural trauma narrative that helped to ignite the Civil Rights Movement." About Angela Onwuachi-Willig: A graduate of Grinnell College (B.A.), University of Michigan Law School (J.D.), and Yale University (Ph.D.), Angela Onwuachi-Willig is Dean and Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law. Previously, she served as Chancellor’s Professor of Law at UC Berkeley. She is author of According to Our Hearts: Rhinelander v. Rhinelander and the Law of the Multiracial Family and numerous articles in leading law journals like the Yale Law Journal, California Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Northwestern University Law Review, and Vanderbilt Law Review. She is the recipient of numerous teaching awards, a former Iowa Supreme Court finalist, a recipient of Law and Society Association’s John Hope Franklin Award, an elected member of the American Law Institute, and the first professor (along with her co-author Dean Mario Barnes of the University of Washington School of Law) to receive both the AALS’s Clyde Ferguson and Derrick Bell Awards. Most recently, she was honored as an EXTRAordinary Woman in Boston in spring 2020. Additionally, she and four black women decanal colleagues—Danielle Conway (Penn-State Dickinson Law), Danielle Holley-Walker (Howard Law), Kim Mutcherson (Rutgers Law), and Carla Pratt (Washburn Law)—were selected to be the inaugural recipients of the AALS Impact Award in recognition of the extraordinary work they performed in collating the Law Deans Antiracist Clearinghouse Project in January 2021. King Hall's Racial Justice Speaker Series As protests over police brutality and systemic racism have swept the nation, UC Davis School of Law has reaffirmed its longtime commitment to racial justice. Throughout 2020-21, the law school is offering a Racial Justice Speaker Series examining some of the most urgent issues facing our nation and world today. The series has gathered leading voices on civil rights, criminal justice, and civic and governmental responsibility. The goals are to inform, enlighten, and - most important - engage in meaningful conversation with our King Hall community and the larger public.