Lift Every Voice by Lani Guinier

Simon & Schuster

May 20, 1998
Web posted at: 1:38 p.m. EDT (1338 GMT)

(CNN) -- In 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated his old friend and classmate Lani Guinier to the prestigious and crucial post of Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. The nomination sparked a firestorm of controversy, and was eventually withdrawn. Now, Lani Guinier breaks her silence in an insider's account of what really happened behind the closed doors of the Oval Office, the Justice Department, and the U.S. Senate.

Introduction

It's taken me many years, but in my conscious moments I don't regret any of it. Not the decision of the president to nominate me. Not the collapse of the president's support in the face of intense, ideological attack from the right and the center/right. Not the microscopic personal scrutiny I received in the press both before and after. Not the subsequent valedictory treatment I received from people I didn't know, but for whom I clearly came to represent so much. Especially not the belated discovery that this betrayal was not about me, but about the collapse of a movement. None of it.

How I came to this point is the story of this book. This book is about the battles fought in the belief that our racial history and our commitment to equality and democracy are essential parts of the same story. It has not always been a pretty story, nor one that follows an inevitable path. This book is not, however, an effort to settle scores. It's the story of the efforts of men and women who believe fundamentally in the promise of the American creed and who act on that belief in their everyday lives. These are people whose lives are without notoriety or fame, but in whose willingness to take risks we see the honor of real heroism.

They are ordinary people in that they do not hold elected office or wield formal power. They do not enjoy great wealth, easy access to the media, lengthy resumes, or "big jobs." Like so many others who have changed the course of our history, they appear ordinary to the unobservant, but on closer scrutiny they are extraordinary in the way we all benefit from the actual work they do.

These are the people, some of whom were once civil rights activists, clients, or sympathizers, who still struggle to connect with others to make a difference, not just for themselves but for their families and their community. These are people who struggle within their own neighborhoods to create the possibility for others to be treated with dignity, to be given an opportunity to speak, and, even more, to be given a meaningful chance to participate in making the decisions that affect all of our lives. These are people with considerable power, but their power depends on commitment and sustained struggle, and not just isolated struggle. These are people whose voices are too often missing from public debate about issues on which they are expert. Their voices are missing not because they don't want to speak but because they don't get a hearing.

When I was trying voting cases as a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund during the 1980s, many of these people were my clients. When I say "my clients," I am referring to more than a single person or group of people who retain a lawyer to represent them in a legal case. The term is a metaphor for those whom civil rights lawyers, including myself, undertook to represent when we joined the civil rights movement and fought for civil rights issues. We were lawyers, often playing traditional roles in court or behind the scenes as legislative advocates. But we were also deeply connected to the interests of those whom we sought to represent. Their interests, as we saw them, were not simply an improvement in their individual material conditions or social status. We did not see ourselves as merely litigating on behalf of a set of special or unique interests. We represented ordinary people, who fought for the chance to become active citizens in a genuine and inclusive democracy. We believed that if our clients could participate in making decisions that affected their lives, they would change those decisions in ways that enriched all of us.

Participation matters, after all. A seat at the table and a voice at the podium enables each of us to become part of something larger than ourselves.

Self-reliance is an important survival tool. But participation among and with others offers more than simple survival. It nourishes and reinforces both the individual and the community. When individuals participate as citizens, they often realize their fullest potential, supported and affirmed by others. The act of participating in concert reinforces the individual dignity and sense of purpose even of those who fight and fail.

My civil rights clients understood this all too well. They were people who fought back not simply because they were personally aggrieved, but because their injury connected them to a community and a movement that was both as narrow as their local interests and as broad as a nation. My clients were most powerful when they could tell their own stories not having to translate their emotions, their hurts, their hopes, or their fears through the formal categories of a single lawsuit. They understood and believed more deeply than most in the law, but they also knew it is democracy on which the law rests. And democracy demands the ability to participate, the opportunity to act in close association with others, and the right to a hearing. It was only when they could speak plainly through collective actions Americans of any color would understand that their voices were in fact heard.

It was while my nomination to be Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights was pending in 1993 that I saw, from the inside, the ways in which the commitment to a civil rights vision that is inclusive, democratic, and empowering often means that against you are arrayed the powerful forces of privilege, both public and private. That experience allowed me to understand why meaningful participation is so important. it also reminded me, in the most personal way possible, that the civil rights movement, in too many ways, has left that understanding behind.

In seeking the nomination, I wasn't fighting for a specific legal remedy or a specific legal cause, but I experienced the kinds of things my clients did, in a different context. I now knew firsthand what it meant to have no voice. My clients, who fought for the right to vote, were fighting for a voice. By playing according to the rules laid down to me, I surrendered my voice to others. In this book, I describe how I lost and then reclaimed my own voice by interweaving my story with those of others -- the men and women who taught me, through their own example, the redemptive value of collective action and the importance of voicing individual grievances within a larger, community-based struggle.

In retrospect, much has crystalized for me since the nomination. I came to see my "dis-appointment" as an opportunity rather than a defeat. While I was rejected by the political mainstream as a nominee for public office, I was affirmed by others as a "scholar with a heart," what The New Yorker called an "Idea Woman." I became myself. I could now speak in my own voice. I could also use this experience to invite others into the conversation.

This, then, is also the story of my own intellectual and political growth and how the nomination debacle moved me to another stagea broader public platform and a more complex but ultimately satisfying personal and professional identity. In losing a hearing I was pushed back to strength. I discovered the strength that comes from promoting a more inclusive social justice agenda. I found my own voice in listening to others lift theirs.

Copyright © 1998 by Lani Guinier. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN: 0-684-81145-6

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