Mary I. Yu, Civility in Our Conversations about Race and Culture, 66 Wash Bar News 5, (May 2011)
View the full article.

Summary

Judge Yu proposes that civility should be used both within and outside the legal profession to start important and necessary conversations about race. “Civility calls us to a state of compassion and empathy. An active and civil engagement about a difficult topic such as race would also permit us to reveal our own biases, share our unfamiliarity of traditions and practices, and expose our ignorance of certain facts without causing personal pain to another. And when we inadvertently cause pain to another, civility requires an apology and a request to rewind and start over. At the same time, the practice of civility also requires vulnerability; it means that some of us must take the risk of sharing the pain of being on the receiving end of bigotry, both real and perceived, with the hope that the listener might better understand its impact.”