The Philadelphia Diversity Law Group (PDLG), founded in 2001, is committed to fostering participation of a more diverse group of lawyers in the Greater Philadelphia Region in order to make our legal profession stronger, more productive and better equipped to address the challenges of the 21st century. Our 35 members—23 law firms and 12 law departments–acting together as PDLG have created programs to enhance recruitment and retention of lawyers of diverse backgrounds for such members and the Philadelphia legal community as a whole. We were founded to help address the lack of diverse attorneys here in Philadelphia. We have taken action to do so.
Although we have not addressed all of the problems associated with a lack of diversity in our profession, over the years through our programs and events we also have made some progress and have celebrated some success. And now we are confronted with the awful spectacle of Charlottesville. None of us could have imagined that the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists would march in such numbers openly and brazenly into the streets of this bucolic college town spouting their filth and hatred. None of us were prepared to hear the cry of the band-aid being ripped off of race relations in the United States. We were all hoping that healing was taking place under that band-aid. We thought that the medicine of the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement and the LGBTQ movement was doing its job. We thought that we were doing our job. Then Charlottesville happened.
