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CNN Live Saturday

Racial and Gender Discrimination Remain a Fact of Life in American Workplace

Aired September 01, 2001 - 13:20   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DONNA KELLEY, CNN ANCHOR: In this country, discrimination remains a grim fact of life, even at the highest levels of the working world. Our Brian Cabell has our report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): 46-year-old Brenda Gardner is part of a distinct minority, she's an African-American female attorney.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hey, girl, what're you doing?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I got married.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Got married?

CABELL: Gardner herself has never married, never had children because she's devoted herself to her legal career. But she's faced obstacles, she says, almost from the day she graduated the University of Florida law school. The big firms, even those with positions available, turned her away.

BRENDA GARDNER, ATTORNEY: They would just say, "we don't have a position available at this point that you would fit into."

CABELL: "Fit," that's the key word. African-Americans, she says, sometimes just don't fit in the white-dominated legal profession.

Less than 13 percent of all attorneys nationwide are people of color. Only 3 percent have been promoted to partner in the nation's major law firms.

Paul-Hastings is a prime example -- 182 partners nationwide, six Asian-Americans, three Hispanics, only five African-Americans. That's 3 percent.

R. LAWRENCE ASHE JR., SENIOR PARTNER: We've not been good at developing ways to identify talented lawyers and law students who come from less than ideal academic backgrounds and may have come from mediocre school systems.

CABELL: In other words, attorneys such as Brenda Gardner may have been turned down at firms because her grades weren't first rate.

She'll concede that, to an extent. It took her three tries to pass the bar exam. But she says there's more.

GARDNER: Can I get you -- this is the Holms (ph) file.

CABELL: As a black woman, she says she's never been able to join the old boys network -- that loose, mostly white grouping of lawyers and judges who eat, socialize, play golf and do business together.

(on camera): You never joined a country club?

GARDNER: Right.

CABELL: You don't want to be in a country club?

GARDNER: If I had that kind of disposable income, I'm sure I would, and I had someone who was willing to sponsor me as a membership.

CABELL (voice-over): Her friend, Georgia Superior Court Judge Thelma Moore agrees racism still exists in American courtrooms, even among her fellow judges.

THELMA MOORE, SUPERIOR COURT JUDGE: We have many good- intentioned folk who wouldn't recognize that when they -- when an African-American female attorney comes in and he calls her by her first name, that that is denigrating.

CABELL: Law school Dean Avarita Hanson can relate.

AVARITA HANSON, JOHN MARSHALL LAW SCHOOL: I've sat in court in my lawyer's uniform and had people speak to my clients as if they were the lawyer or hand me papers as if I were the clerk.

CABELL: Brenda Gardner has experienced such slights, but doesn't let them bother her. She knows the walls of discrimination are slow to crumble.

GARDNER: People are more comfortable with what they're accustomed to.

CABELL: And Gardner says she's increasingly comfortable in a mostly white man's world. No, she's not making big bucks in a big firm, but she's working at a job where two generations ago people like her were almost non-existent.

Brian Cabell, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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