WATCH: Penn Law students learn that FedEx is a 'plantation' plagued by structural racism
The University of Pennsylvania law school recently hosted a panel to celebrate its new racial justice clinic, and panelists said that FedEx is a 'white property' that residents in the region call 'a plantation.'
A promotional video advertising the Advocacy for Racial and Civil Justice Clinic says that it is 'committed to training students to become antiracist lawyers.'
The University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) Carey Law School recently hosted a panel of professors, one of whom said that FedEx is a “white property” that residents in the region call “a plantation.”
The panel, “Eradicating the Badges & Incidents of Slavery,” is one of three in a UPenn symposium celebrating the launch of the Advocacy for Racial and Civil Justice Clinic. A video of the panel uploaded to the law school’s YouTube channel on Feb. 13 features Omavi Shukar, an associate research scholar at Columbia Law School, and Alexis Hoag-Fordjour, a professor at Brooklyn Law School.
Hoag-Fordjour referenced the killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tenn., by black police officers. “Police are about maintaining white supremacy, about protecting white property and white people. And when I think about, you know, what is the main industry in Memphis, it’s FedEx,” Hoag-Fordjour says. “Tyre Nichols worked at FedEx.”
Some of the police officers in the department, she continues, “were moonlighting at FedEx,” a company that she says is “founded and run by white people” and sees Memphis as a way “to get cheap labor.”
FedEx’s CEO, Raj Subramaniam, was born in Trivandrum, India. The company’s board of directors appointed him to CEO in Mar. 2022 after he worked there for over 30 years.
Shukar suggested that black police officers, because they work for a predominately white government, can be compared to the “black agents in West Africa” who captured slaves.
He also claimed that racial power relations in the U.S. “are ongoing and have been undisturbed since … the settlers arrived in this country.”
Before the panel began, a promotional video advertised the new clinic as one “committed to training students to become antiracist lawyers.” When UPenn Law considered adding its first clinic in over a decade, the Advocacy for Racial and Civil Justice Clinic was chosen out of over 75 clinic options.
In one scene, students learn about structural racism as the speaker describes the clinic adding “movement lawyering” to the school’s offerings. The clinic’s purpose, according to director and professor Cara McClellan, is “to provide legal support to the grassroots movement for racial justice in Philadelphia.”
Campus Reform contacted all relevant parties listed for comment and will update this article accordingly.
