Sadity Esq

Law school is often described as the place where idealism is refined into realism.

That is not what happened to me.

What law school refined was my understanding of how comfortable educated people can be with injustice…so long as it can be defended.

One of the earliest moments that permanently altered my view of the legal profession came during a classroom discussion about the killing of Latasha Harlins.

A 14-year-old Black girl.

Shot in the back.

Killed over a bottle of orange juice,

Money still in her hand.

What shocked me was not that the case was being discussed. It was how quickly my classmates, future attorneys, moved to defend the shooter. Not because the facts supported it. Not because Latasha posed a threat. But because, as was said plainly in the room, Black people can be intimidating.

That justification did not come wrapped in anger or overt hostility. It came calmly. Confidently. Academically. It was framed as “reasonableness.” And others agreed… In, fact, everyone who spoke that day agreed except for me. In a class of 200, I was not the only woman, not the only minority, not the only liberal, but I was the only one to disagree.

The girl who rarely spoke and often got tongue tied was Latasha’s only advocate.

That was the moment I understood something I had not been prepared for: The law does not cleanse prejudice; it often gives it language.
The standard being applied was not danger. It was perception.
And perception, I learned that day, is racialized.

Latasha was described as “threatening.” “Scary-looking.” This, despite the fact that she was a child, was turned away, and was walking out of the store when she was shot. The argument was not that the shooting was right, but that it was understandable. That fear alone could justify lethal force.

Sitting there, I realized I was watching people rehearse the reasoning they would later use in real courtrooms, with real consequences, for real people who looked like me.
That realization was not theoretical; it was not abstract. It was formative.

I saw how easily the concept of “reasonable fear” expands when the subject is Black. How quickly innocence becomes irrelevant. How the law’s language can be used not to interrogate violence, but to rationalize it.

That was the day I stopped believing the law was neutral.

Not because the law itself pulled the trigger; but because I saw how willingly people trained in it would excuse the result. How comfortable they were collapsing a child into a threat. How untroubled they were by the distance between fact and justification.

Racists get law degrees.

People who rationalize violence get law degrees.

People who mistake fear for justification get law degrees.

That reality does not disappear because someone can cite precedent.

I stayed in the profession, but I stopped romanticizing it. I no longer believe that legal training produces justice, or that credentials imply moral clarity. Without courage, without self-examination, the law simply becomes a more articulate way to defend harm.

When I think back to that classroom now, what unsettles me most is not how extreme the opinions were, but how ordinary they felt. How familiar the reasoning still sounds. How little has changed.

That day in law school did not make me cynical.

It made me clear-eyed.

And clarity, once gained, cannot be unlearned.

Her name was Latasha Harlin… she was a child.