"If Black lawyers have [an obligation], white lawyers have it too," he said.
Zola B. Mashariki, a first-year law student, said that after seeing her parents battle for civil rights and her brother struggling through a Brooklyn high school, she felt indebted to use her education to help the Black community.
"I'm not saying that everybody has to do that but I'm wondering where our community would be if we didn't do that," Mashariki said.
But some listeners challenged Sandel. One mused that strong community identification often led to chauvinism, and others said the Black community is not monolithic.
Robert T. Simmelkjaer, also a first-year Law student, asked Sandel, "Can race define who we are!" Simmelkjaer added that Blacks raised in suburbs might have more in common with suburban whites than inner-city Blacks. To this Sandel replied that the common history of a group, not skin color, determined the community. A Black individual's life story is "inseparable from a life story of a people and a community," said the professor