The Problem with Race, Empathy, and Social Justice

In 1991, I wrote several opinion pieces to the Los Angeles Daily News that questioned then-Mayor Tom Bradley’s demands to prosecute officers involved in the arrest of Rodney King. Although I agreed that the officers had used excessive force, it was also apparent that the officers had followed policies required by Bradley and his civilian police commission since 1983. (Coincidentally, the accused officers were acquitted a year later not because they hadn’t used excessive force, but because they had followed Mayor Bradley’s brutal policies.)

Back then, I was an eleven-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department. Despite having spent more than 2200 days on the street with more than 30,000 citizen contacts, I had no significant history of excessive force. I was also among the most productive officers on the LAPD and had already accumulated dozens of commendations. Although reluctant to get involved in the King dispute, I was dismayed that no LAPD staff officers had the courage to publicly defend the accused. When four LAPD officers needed backup from their agency, my fellow officers suddenly grew bashful.

No one had told me that, one hundred years earlier, US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes opined that a policeman “may have a constitutional right to talk politics, but he has no constitutional right to be a policeman.” Nevertheless, my performance and record were above reproach. In 1991, I did not imagine that the LAPD or city prosecutors would file false criminal charges against me in retaliation of something I wrote in a newspaper.

I was wrong.

Weeks later, I was accused of assaulting a pedestrian. Although the LAPD cleared me of all charges, the deputy city attorney pursued them anyway, and I became one of more than 100 men who were maliciously charged for political reasons.

In February 1993, I found myself before Judge Veronica Simmons McBeth, a light-skinned black female appointee to the Los Angeles Municipal Court. It was apparently assumed that Judge McBeth’s experience as a black woman growing up and working in “a white man’s world” provided her with the judicial temperament to promote racial and social justice. Known as “The Princess,” McBeth was appointed to the bench after a period of unremarkable service at the City Attorney’s Office.

Although I probably should have noticed that my attorney and I were the only white men in the entire courtroom, I still refused to imagine that the prosecutor or judge’s sensibilities regarding social justice would interfere with their conduct during the trial.

Again, I was wrong.

McBeth refused to allow any part of my transcribed LAPD hearing into the record and warned that I would be held in contempt if I even mentioned that the LAPD had cleared me of all charges. And although my attorney impeached every witness against me, McBeth showed no interest to manage the prosecutor’s politically and racially-motivated attack against me.

Hours later, I was convicted of assaulting an uninjured suspect who the LAPD had determined a year before that I had not assaulted. I was fired the following December.

Fortunately for me, I returned to the LAPD in 1994 after Judge McBeth and Prosecutor David Sotelo were found guilty of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct. By then, however, the damage was done. My marriage was in a shambles and my financial stress had forced me into bankruptcy.

The problem with Judge McBeth was not her incompetence, but her willingness to suspend her duty as an impartial judge so that the jury would make “the correct social decision.”

While McBeth and prosecutors like Sotelo (now a judge), Mike Nifong and Alice Hand promoted what SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor and Barak Obama might call social justice, their actions chilled the willingness of anyone, particularly a white man, who might question the policies and morality of politicians or peers of questionable moral character.

It should also be noted that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was on the bench when the US Supreme Court issued another significant opinion. In 1896, the Court would have agreed when Sotomayor declared that “The aspiration to impartiality is just that -- it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others.”

They would have undoubtedly agreed when she said that “gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.”

Sotomayor’s joke about the federal appeals courts being a place “where policy is made” also rings hollow, especially in light of the 1896 SCOTUS decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which led directly to segregated white and black schools, segregated drinking fountains, segregated bathrooms, buses, restaurants and sixty years of domestic terrorism. That Court's racial and social sensitivites ignored the Constitution and reversed most the social gains that followed the Civil War and Reconstruction. Although more than a century has passed, the damage caused by those racially myopic justices still lingers today.

In contrast to Chief Justice John Roberts self-evident ruling that “The way to end racial discrimination is to stop discriminating by race,” President Obama and Judge Sotomayor seem to be as preoccupied by race as the Democrats who ruled in Plessy. The difference is that, today, the bigots are sporting different complexions.

While the Republican Party and US Constitution have always promoted equality over the promotion of race, gender, or sexual orientation, it appears that Obama and the nomination of the nation’s first Latina to the US Supreme Court is a celebration of race and affirmative action rather than an expectation that they will assume the duties required of them by the Constitution.

Like Martin Luther King, I once had a dream that we would be judged not by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character. Unfortunately for America, Democrats have elected a President who disagrees.

UPDATE - I just found this link to a black forum where Judge McBeth spoke on racism and sexism:

McBeth, a state judge for 21 years, said she faces discrimination every time she walks into a room filled with people she doesn't know. "There is an expectation of incompetency; it doesn't go away," she said. "No matter how far you go and how much you succeed, you have to prove how smart you are." In contrast, McBeth said, when a group of white males meets for the first time, there is an expectation of equality. "I don't feel sorry for myself," she added, "but it does take a lot of energy" to prove that one is equal.

Note to Judge McBeth: White male employees who overcome discriminatory roadblocks celebrate their achievement for the same reasons that affirmative action stains women and minorities with the expectation that they could not have succeeded on their own merit. Affirmative action is why employees of all colors and genders cannot celebrate as equals.

To McBeth, it is not enough that white men must endure hiring and promotional discrimination under the pretext of affirmative action – they must also pretend not to notice.

While it is possible that McBeth might’ve succeeded without quotas, the appellate courts agreed that her courtroom behavior was substandard. There must have been some reason why her peers at the City Attorney's Office knew her as The Princess. Indeed, had she violated my civil rights as a male white LAPD officer, she would have been fired - and justifiably so. The fact that she and Sotelo were elevated to the Superior Court after having been found guilty of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct suggests that something other than merit was in play.

Indeed, McBeth sounds much like Queen Gertrude – the lady doth protest too much, indeed.