Natasha Távora Baker (’17), Staff Attorney at Equal Justice Under Law, contributed an opinion to Washington Lawyer magazine describing her personal experience of dissociating on viewing Suzan-Lori Parks’ play “White Noise” and acknowledging the shackles of both our past and present systems (“Turning Off the White Noise of Systemic Racism,” Nov./Dec. 2020). “I had flashbacks to times when I had seen my clients in chains — when I stood next to them or sat in front of them, trying my best to defend their humanity while they couldn’t even hold a pen properly. . . . The shackling of slaves and shackling of inmates are intimately bound by history. The criminal legal system is a legacy of slavery. Unfortunately, that legacy is drowned out by the white noise of racism, so ingrained in the American psyche that it can go unnoticed. . . . I hope more of us — particularly those of us in the legal profession who are white — hear the type of white noise that constantly reminds us that something is not right, rather than the type that just fades into the background. . . . Our violence-first system is a choice, and we can choose healing and accountability instead.”