Chang, Robert S.

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Rock Climbing with the Gotandas

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Seattle University School of Law Digital Commons Faculty Scholarship 1-1-2010 Rock Climbing with the Gotandas Robert S. Chang Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/faculty  Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons Recommended Citation Robert S. Chang, Rock Climbing with the Gotandas, 13 J. GENDER RACE & JUST. 321 (2010). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Seattle University School of Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Seattle University School of Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact coteconor@seattleu.edu. Rock Climbing with the GotandasRobert S. Chang*I began writing this introduction twelve years ago. I had organized inthe Asian Law Journal-now the Asian American Law Journal-asymposium engaging Professor Neil Gotanda's work.' I was to write theguest editor's introduction. I ended up never finishing the piece because Igot into a fight with the student editors of the journal over their decision toreject a piece that I had solicited from a historian. He had written thisbeautiful essay about Neil's use of history and on Neil's impact in AsianAmerican studies. The editors kept saying that it was not legal enough. Mydisagreement with them led me to disengage from the project.I was so pleased when two editors from The Journal of Gender, Race &Justice, after learning about the unpublished essay by the historian,expressed an interest in publishing it. 2 We thought, though, that thehistorian's essay needed some context. As it turns out, Professor Gotandahas a body of work that has never been published; 3 other pieces werepublished in truncated form with substantial and important parts left on the"cutting room floor." An example of the latter includes the piece for whichhe is best known, A Critique of "Our Constitution is Color-Blind, 4 whichin its original form included lengthy discussions of Asian Americans andother non-Black groups. It has always been my view that Professor Gotandawas ahead of his time. He was the first legal scholar to argue forcefully for* Professor of Law and Director, Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, Seattle UniversitySchool of Law. I would like to thank the editors of The Journal of Gender, Race & Justice forsupporting this project. A version of this was presented on April 2, 2009, when I introduced NeilGotanda, who received a Founders Award at Critical Race Theory 20 (CRT 20) at the University ofIowa College of Law in Iowa City, Iowa.1. See Symposium in Honor ofNeil Gotanda, 4 ASIAN L.J. 1 (1997) (contributions by AlfredC. Yen, Gary Minda, Keith Aoki, Enid Trucious-Haynes, David Benjamin Oppenheimer, NatsuTaylor Saito, and Anthony S. Chen).2. Courtney Vorwald and Nicholas Benson, editors with The Journal of Gender, Race &Justice, approached me at CRT 20 to discuss this possibility, which happily became a reality. See K.Scott Wong, The Opening of the Law in the Pursuit of Asian American History, 13 J. GENDER RACE& JUST. 325 (2010).3. One of his "lost episodes" was published ten years after it was supposed to be published.See Neil Gotanda, Race, Citizenship, and the Search for Political Community Among "We thePeople": A Review Essay on Citizenship Without Consent, 76 OR. L. REv. 233 (1997). Perhaps oneday, his unpublished Harvard LL.M. thesis will see the light of day.4. Neil Gotanda, A Critique of "Our Constitution is Color-Blind, " 44 STAN. L. REv. 1 (1991)[hereinafter Gotanda, A Critique].HeinOnline  -- 13 J. Gender Race & Just. 321 2009-2010The Journal of Gender, Race & Justicethe importance of talking about race beyond the Black-White paradigm. 5But the legal academy, and law review editors, did not always appreciatethis perspective.The Journal editors, Gotanda, and I decided that the complete versionof Gotanda's "Other Non-Whites" piece 6 would provide a nice complementto the historian's essay. His review of Peter Irons's Justice at War waspreviously published in the Columbia Law Review. The editors of theColumbia Law Review had reduced a sixty-six page manuscript to sevenjournal pages. It is so nice to see, twenty-five years later, the completeversion. And I would get the opportunity to complete what I began twelveyears ago.One weekend twelve years ago, Neil Gotanda called and asked if Iwanted to go rock climbing with him and his son, Tetsuji. This call was likeseveral other calls from Neil that I had received over the past couple years.On the earlier occasions, I always managed to find some excuse not to go-Iwas tired, I needed to write-when the truth of the matter is that I'm a littleafraid of heights, along with a more generalized fear of falling (failing?).This time when Neil asked, no excuse came out. I said, "Sure." He said,"We'll be over at your house around 10 a.m.; I've got extra shoes and aharness that will fit you." Thus began my adventure.In many ways, my rock climbing adventure was simply a continuationof the adventures that Neil has led me on throughout my career. I firstencountered Neil through his writings. He's most well-known for his piece,A Critique of "Our Constitution is Color-Blind. ,7 But as I stated earlier, hisearlier drafts of this piece included a deeper examination of the complexityof race in the United States with a lengthy discussion of Asian Americans,which the Stanford Law Review editors made him take out. His brilliant,short piece, ostensibly a review of Peter Irons's Justice at War,8 laid theintellectual outline or contours for the later, more sustained critique of theBlack-White racial paradigm. His suggestion that we pay attention to thecategory "Other non-Whites" provided a way to talk about race beyond theBlack-White paradigm. His articulation of foreignness attributed to AsianAmericans as the primary mode by which U.S. society subordinated themeventually became the mainstay of much of the Asian Americanjurisprudence that developed in the next decade. His book chapter in theearly 1980s on Asian American Rights and the "Miss Saigon Syndrome, "95. Neil Gotanda, "Other Non-Whites" in American Legal History: A Review of Justice atWar, 85 COLUM. L. REv. 1186 (1985) (reviewing PETER IRONS, JUSTICE AT WAR (1983))[hereinafter Gotanda, "Other Non- Whites '].6. Id.7. Gotanda, A Critique, supra note 4.8. Gotanda, "Other Non-Whites, " supra note 5.9. Neil Gotanda, Asian American Rights and the "Miss Saigon Syndrome, " in ASIAN[13:2010]HeinOnline  -- 13 J. Gender Race & Just. 322 2009-2010Rock Climbing with the Gotandasan early look at the culture wars that erupted in the next decade, was amethodological tour de force that combined cultural analysis with law to dointerdisciplinary legal scholarship before there was interdisciplinary legalscholarship. He continued to develop this methodology of combiningcultural studies with legal analysis to unpack the Soon Ja Du case,' 0 whichinvolved a Korean American shopkeeper who shot a Black teenage girl inthe back in a dispute over a bottle of orange juice. 11 The shooting of LatashaHarlins and the shockingly light sentence Du received provided part of thetinder and the powder that ignited in the conflagration known as the L.A.Riots, Unrest, or Rebellion following the acquittal of those four whitepolicemen in the first trial in the beating of Rodney King. Neil's culturalstudies reading allowed him to unpack the density of race in a multi-racesetting.He was ahead of his time.When I think about my career, I realize how much I owe to Neil. I owea debt of gratitude to so many of the trailblazers in critical race theory. Butmy debt to Neil is much more personal, much more specific. When I taughtat California Western School of Law in the mid 1990s, I used to joke that Iheld the Neil Gotanda Chair in Asian American Jurisprudence. I felt odd insome ways being at Cal Western because Neil had taught there some yearsback. I found myself being rewarded for doing the same kind of work that hehad been doing-work that got him, essentially, fired.It's not always good to be ahead of your time.But Neil was not someone who was going to be stopped. The body ofhis work shows a constant engagement with new modes of analysis, thoughalways relentlessly interrogating the complexity of race in the United States.So many of us owe him a tremendous personal and intellectual debt.Back to the summer of 1997. I'm working my way up the face of alarge boulder. When I get stuck, Neil suggests places for my hands andfeet-he suggests a pathway that might work. As I work my way up, I don'tworry about falling because he has me on belay, spotting me. I know that if Ifall, he will catch me. I make it eventually to the top, able to get therebecause of him.It was my privilege to introduce my friend and mentor, Neil Gotanda, atCRT 20 to receive a Critical Race Theory Founders Award. It is myprivilege to introduce his Article here.AMERICANS AND THE SUPREME COURT: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY 1087 (Hyung-chan Kim ed.,1992).10. People v. Soon Ja Du, 5 Cal. App. 4th 822 (Cal. Ct. App. 1992).11. Neil Gotanda, Multiculturalism and Racial Stratification, in MAPPINGMULTICULTURALISM 238 (Avery F. Gordon & Christopher Newfield eds., 1996).HeinOnline  -- 13 J. Gender Race & Just. 323 2009-2010HeinOnline  -- 13 J. Gender Race & Just. 324 2009-2010

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Rock Climbing with the Gotandas

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