 Hello, welcome to Think Tech Hawaii. Good afternoon. Or depending on where in the world you're watching this or when in the world you're watching this would be good evening or good morning. Thanks so much for joining us on Think Tech Hawaii. And please do, if you appreciate the contributions Think Tech makes good two exchanges of thoughts and ideas and insights and perspectives. This is a time of year where Think Tech welcomes contributions. Go on to the Think Tech Hawaii website, click the donate button if you're motivated and help out support if you can. Then we welcome that. So today, we have again, really special people with us. I'm gonna start with Professor Vernelia Randall, Professor Emerita from Dayton University School of Law and a couple of decades in the nursing profession before that. So I'm a multi-talented, multi-skilled, multi-experienced person. And we've just learned that Professor Randall is the recipient of the Society of American Law Teachers Award for Great Teacher for 2022. That's a unique award from a very, very highly respected group that spans American law teachers across the country and beyond. So I wanna congratulate you for that extremely well earned and deserve. Thank you. And I think especially significant in that Professor Randall has been for several decades the leading authority on race, racism and the law in American legal education. And that has not been an easy road to hold or a painless one, I'm sure, and we'll probably touch on that. We also have retired Hawaii judge Sandra Sims, the first African American judge in Hawaii and an extremely well recognized and appreciated supporter to community service and education in Hawaii, including just this last week, Judge Sims put together, helped put together a program in which Attorney General Ellison from Minnesota, talked about not only the George Floyd trial and significance of that, but also some of the other recent ones, the Rittenhouse trial and verdict and the Ahmad Arbery trial and verdict and what went into those and what made those somewhat different. So I wanna acknowledge both of these truly, truly outstanding women for unique contributions and shared learning experiences that literally are not available anywhere else or from anyone else. So thank you both for that. Thank you. And so happy to be here. Thank you. So today. Oh, there you go, Judge Sims. Go right ahead, jump in Professor. No, I didn't have anything to say, go ahead. Okay. I was unmuting myself because an airplane flew past I'm near Schofield Barracks airfield and so there's apparently something going on. Well, we're pretty close to the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor bombing attack. Yes, and I'm not far from there either. So it's about maybe 15, 20 minutes from here. And so, yes. So they may be doing some drills and some practice sessions for that because next Tuesday is the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. That's right. It's hard to imagine. One of the things that some viewers and others have asked if we could reach into and today's a good time to do that is what are some of the personal choices that have made the biggest difference for you in your lives? And Professor Randall Honoree, the great American teacher, what are some of the most significant choices that you've made and impacts that they've had on you and your life and others? Well, first of all, you know, I could ask that question and I try to be honest, give an honest answer, which is for me at least. The answer for me is that my choices were never really planned out very ahead of time. I made, every choice, every made a choice I made in my life was not in some career mode, but the best choice for me at the time and some of them, you know, some of them like moving to Alaska because I got married to someone who wanted to live in Alaska and I didn't. So I moved, but that was a great choice for me because I got opportunities in Alaska that I wouldn't have had. Then going to law school wasn't going, I didn't go to law school because I was so tied into wanting to be a lawyer. I went to law school because I wanted to be in the commissioner's office in the public health office in the state of Alaska. I was working in and they kept bringing, I was the maternal child nurse coordinator for the state of Alaska and they kept bringing these young white men with master's degrees into my office for me to train and then to promote them into the commissioner's office over me. And I looked at it and I decided, you know, I got three stereotypes. I'm a woman, people don't think women are smart. I'm a nurse, people don't think nurses are smart and I'm black, people don't think black is smart. I can stop being a nurse. I love nursing, I love being a nursing, I love the profession of nursing, but I didn't love being, so I then, why did I go to law school? Because incorrectly another stereotype, people think lawyers are smart. That's the only reason I went to law school and, well, not quite the only, and the state of Alaska was paying for people to go to law school. And I was a single parent with two children and I thought, okay, I can do that. I can switch, I can change my persona by going to law school and I can have someone else pay for it. And so, and those were the two, because those two decisions really made the major impact on my life and both personally and professionally. Wow. Wow, that's... Yeah, go ahead. That's him, Sandra. Well, no way, as you were gonna ask the question following up, that's interesting. I think our basis for making decisions is kind of in common, Professor. I did not have a grand plan either for my life other than there was a point at which I knew I wanted to go to law school. And I say, go to law school. I had, what was gonna happen after that, I was gonna be a lawyer. That part, I knew exactly what it would be. I did not know. I grew up in Chicago, I have a lot of family there that are very involved in church groups and community stuff, so it's a big network. So when, again, like you, Professor, when I was, when I got married and my husband worked for United Airlines, he retired from there. And we had children, he had the opportunity to move to Hawaii, something he had always wanted to do. And so we came here in 79 and I had just finished law school. So I didn't even get to practice in Chicago. It was like, you're going to, we were at home. I think he tells the story that he got this call, it was in the dead of winter, there was a storm and he got a call from someone in Hawaii, he said, there's this position here, do you want to come? And it's Chicago and it's January or March or there's snow outside and he just said, yeah. So you go like you, Professor, I go, we're like, okay, I got to go here. And I didn't know anyone here. Of course, he didn't know people here, but I came here to Hawaii with just a law degree. I had a couple of people I could make phone calls to, but beyond that, the network was primarily his. It was, you know, mostly these airline people who are, tend to be far more social than most folk. But I think that was like you say, the turning point because I was here and having to make my own way and things unfolded. I just met, like Chuck says, I just keep meeting all these incredible people along the way and things happened. I was able to get up. There was a new court starting at that time when I got here, the Intermediate Court of Appeals and Hawaii had not had an appeals and a meant Intermediate Court. And so I just thought, well, I think I'd like to be a law clerk. So I just applied to all the judges that had been named to the Intermediate Court for a law clerk position. Not knowing, of course, you know, law clerks is a little bit, that's not quite how you get that job. That's what I did. And I was very, very fortunate to work for as a position with Chief Judge Ayashi, one of the kindest. To this day, just working with him was like changing the whole directive of my legal path, I think, his manner of his work ethic, his way of treating people, his regard for the legal profession, and, you know, the issues that we have, these issues now with civility, but that was never the case then. It was, there was that way of working within the law. And so it colored everything that I did after that. I was at the Corporation Counsel's office and, you know, onto the bench and so forth. It really did. And so if you look at something that's like a turning point, that was kind of it. And I did not plan to be on the bench, that sort of came up as well. So yeah, sometimes it's better, well, I won't say not for everyone, but I think being able to be in that place where you're, you know, able to move and flow and let things happen, you never know. Well, actually, here we are. I think that it's a privilege to be able to plan out your life and very few people have that privilege. That, that- That's a good point. That unless you have a lot of money and a lot of connections, you pretty much have to go the way the wind blows and make the best of that as you can. Good point. When I graduated from law school, like graduated, okay, when I went to law school, I had two master's degrees and almost 20 years of nursing. And I did really good in law school. I graduated 11th in the class of over a hundred. And then I wasn't getting any job, Portland, Oregon. And, you know, everyone wants, whenever people say, we don't have any black, they always want to say, oh, you know, we would hire someone if there was someone qualified. And so here I was 11th in the class, two master's degrees, years of experience and I'm not getting job offers and people all around me getting different kind of job offers. And I truly believe to this day, I don't know it, but I believe it that my Dean got me a job because I was becoming an embarrassment. Graduation was around the corner. All the top students who were white had jobs. I was the only one that didn't have a job of the top year. I had a job offer whether they had accepted. And he came to me and said, and I won't say the name of the law firm because I don't want to be sued. He came to me and said, if this law firm and was like the third largest law firm in Oregon at an Oregon at the time, if they offer you a job, will you accept it? I'm like, I got two children. If they offer me a job, you know I'm gonna accept it. So that's how I ended up in a large law firm in Portland, Oregon. It was not a good fit because being in a large law firm means you don't antagonize a meeting. And I've never been that kind of person. And so I antagonized my firm was, you know, and it didn't help because they never, this was back in 1980, five or so. They didn't understand that if you have the only black woman, only black person in Oregon, in a firm, you can't hide their conduct. So if they go give a talk, when I don't give a talk, it didn't help to say, I'm from a large law firm in Oregon. It was like, yeah, everybody knew who I was and where I was. And that became the great on them and their attempts to restrict me. And so I decided I needed to get out of there and I decided I was gonna go into law teaching because I had been doing adjunct teaching at my law school and healthcare law as done. And I remember to this day, they was kind of like, oh, yeah, well, because at the time, my law school was a fourth year school. So I was a graduate from a fourth year school. And they was like, you're never gonna get a law, you're never gonna get a teaching job because teaching jobs only go to people who have graduated from these top-tier schools. And I'm like, yeah, that may be true, but they'll have to say no to my faith. I'm gonna go. And I got quite a few offers. It helped that I was older, 40, with two master's degrees and a lot of nursing background. I think that offset all that. And getting a law teaching was the best thing that it was a great career move for me. I love teaching and I love doing it, but it wasn't, it was designed in that I made that choice at that moment. Oh, okay. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. But I didn't say in law school, I wanna be a law teacher. I didn't say when I got the, there was the consciousness of being a law teacher was not one that I pre-planned. It was one that I came to as the circumstances of my environment came together and I realized, okay, I gotta change. And I don't like to practice the law, primarily because the practice of law is about representing a client and you have to make decisions that are not good for society in order to help your client with. And I didn't like that. Yeah. Yeah. You know. And so I thought, well, you know, I can indoctrinate students. And it's been, it was good. I can be a progressive law teacher and not have to worry about what my clients did. Yeah, that's a good perspective. Stories, yeah. You said so amazing. Well, it's, wow, that's a great story. So here we have two exceptionally bright, exceptionally gifted women who get into law careers. Coming from, I think, Professor Randall, you indicated that you grew up earlier in Texas. I grew up in the Southwest segregation, went to a two room black school. And that's him, Sandra, you were in Chicago or a lot of your growing up time. So those are areas with probably more black populations than Portland and Hawaii. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, you kind of, yeah, Chicago is quite, at least in those days, you know, you certainly had a considerable, it still is basically a segregated kind of city in terms of, you know, housing and education and those kinds of things. You have your, you know, it's changing somewhat. But basically, yeah, that's, and then of course there's the political climate of Chicago, which is its own, which is its own element, which is, we need not go, it's not time for that, but it is its own setting. And, you know, I had friends and family involved in all of those things. And so, yeah, it is a very different place than Hawaii. And that, you know, coming here was certainly a significant cultural shift. And then, you know, raising, you know, my kids all grew up here, because when we came up, one was born here and two were infants. And so, Ray, that was another of the challenges and changes professor that, you know, when you talk about things that you do differently because they were being raised in an environment that did not have a lot of black folks in it. There were a lot of people of color and multicultural aspects of being here, which is another plus, actually. Actually, it is a plus. And so they grew up in that kind of a setting, not so much having to be, and I use this term, Lucy, not so much being a, you know, apologetic so much for your, you know, being black, being, because that's one of the things we had to do as parents was to really give that sense of who you are as young black children, not other than or less than or any of that, you had to kind of start with this really strong sense of self and self-identity. And so that's kind of one of the things that, I think like you talk about the things that propelled, the choices that propel you into certain circumstances. And so that's what they did as well. And they ended up being very, very comfortable in multicultural and multiracial settings that, and they can pretty much function in all of that. Only one of them, my oldest still lives here. She has her own consulting business, and actually she's probably done some work that may have crossed with what you do. She's in consults with nonprofits and they've been working with a couple of foundations on the main and looking at health disparities in light of COVID and doing quite a bit of research on that. I've been kind of fascinated listening to some of the things that they, you know, she's interviewed quite a few people who have, you know, had done some work in that area. So yeah, because all these other things that kind of propel you into this whatever life that you have, you're right, it is a luxury to be able to sit down and plan the whole thing out. Of course, light doesn't do that anyway, because as they say, no, tomorrow is not promised to anyone. So there's no guarantees that you're gonna be here next week. So you really do have to work to make the best of where you are and what your situation's at. When we moved here, it was kind of traumatic for me, but I remember one of my mom's best friends who was, you know, kind of helping me make this transition. And she said, you know, I would always say, oh, I'm gonna go home, go home. She's like, no, no, you have to remember you have children. And for them, home is where you are. You don't create some other universe that you identify, so you have to create that. So, you know, that was another fact, you know, peace that when you talk about how your law path goes, it also impacted the decision to work in government with corporation console and do that kind of work as opposed to, you know, going in the private practice law, you know, kind of law track because of the time commitments. My kids were young. So it definitely does affect, and I often wondered, I grew up in the segregated South, my dad taught in a two-room school up until I was in the eighth grade and my dad taught in one room and my foster mother taught in the other room. And my kids grew up in a predominantly white integrated school of predominantly, overwhelmingly white, I say predominantly. They often were the only black kids in the school. And it was public schools because in making, as being a single parent, I was concerned about the quality of schools in the black neighborhoods where I was living. I was concerned, I could not afford privacy. So that kind of like, okay, many black families who live in black neighborhoods send their kids to private schools, but I couldn't afford that. And so I made the choice to put my kids to live in a community where I was comfortable with the schools, okay? So my kids could go to those schools. So there was a rational reason for making that choice, but the consequences of that choice is my children had to deal with racism at a much younger age than I had to deal with it. And I didn't realize that that would be a consequence. I didn't, my four-year-old came home sort of crying because the kids kept rubbing his hair and the teacher wouldn't stop it. And just thing after thing happened, all through their lives, there was a racist act by someone that I had to help them deal with and I had to confront in their school. And it just never occurred to me at the time that that would be a problem. But I'm not sure I could have made any other choice. Right, I was gonna say I was concerned about that. For what I wanted to do and I still am fine now. I just had to, I just had to, I had the added burden and then anybody, any black parent who has their child in a predominantly white school is going to have to supervise the racism part of their education, not just the academic part or the social skills part, but they have to deal with, how do I help my child deal with racism? How do I deal with racism? Yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely. I think that's just a part of being a parent. You're gonna have to, you have your children are black, you're gonna have to, it's gonna happen. And you just have to, but I think there's another way of preparing them for it in such a way that it does not demean them in the sense because they have a strong sense of themselves. Absolutely. It doesn't like floor them. It's just a, maybe a policy issue that you may have to deal with with the school, but it doesn't affect them. I always tell me you have to have confidence just short of arrogance, you know what I mean for racism. Well, my kids are arrogant. Yeah, now they are. I think they are. I'm afraid of them right now. My dad used to say, oh, those kids won't listen to nobody but you. And I said, yeah, that's what I teach them. But part of the issue, and I wonder about this, one of the things that my parents didn't have to deal with, because this, we moved when I went to a segregated, we moved from the small school to a segregated high school. Okay. So that my parents wanted me to go to a large high school and not a two room high school. So we moved to Amarillo, which had a large black high school. Okay. And I realized that something my parents didn't have to deal with is what I have to deal with. They never had to deal with, is this happening to my kids cause they're black? They never had to ask themselves that question. I mean, they were maybe all other kind of question they had to ask, but having black teachers, all black kids, the racism, now, colorism came up at some time and there were some colorism problems, but they never had to ask themselves, did this happen to my kids because they're black? And I wonder if that's a stressor because I keep wondering, just keep hearing how parents aren't supportive. I wanted to, we know that what's happened in the black schools is the staff isn't black. The staff, at least in Dayton and Orlando, the Dayton, Ohio and Atlanta, the staff is primarily white in schools where the students are predominantly black. Oh, okay. Okay. And so you get a parent who's had racism at work, they've had to bite their lips, they've had to take the bruises, and their kid comes home and says, so and so did X to me. I wonder to what extent parents going on the school is because they feel so helpless in their own work life. And they say, well, no, you know, they feel like, I may not be able to say nothing at work, but nobody's gonna do that to my child. And there's a certain, you know. That's interesting, that's an interesting, yeah. And that's a fantastic place in getting the signals that we're out of time for today, Oh, man, get this. Fantastic stories, thoughts, questions. We've barely scratched the surface here. We'll be back in two weeks. Please come back and join us. And in the interim, if you're so motivated, please go to the Think Tech Hawaii website. Do donate, help us continue these. These are important stories to share for all of us. Professor Kendall, congratulations and thank you. Thank you so much. Congratulations. Thank you as well. Take good care. Happy holidays all and we'll see you in two weeks.