...The complaint stemmed from a lecture Judge Jones gave to the University of Pennsylvania Federalist Society chapter in February 2013. Among the complainants’ claims was that, during her lecture, Judge Jones suggested she believed that members of certain races were predisposed to commit violent crimes. With no recording of the event, witnesses disagreed about exactly what she said. Was she talking about genetic determinism? Or was she only referring to the objective fact that, for whatever reason, our nation’s prisoners are disproportionately black and Latino? The subsequent independent investigation concluded that “whatever she said initially, it is clear that Judge Jones used the question-and-answer period to clarify that she did not adhere to such views,” rejecting the complaint’s version of her speech. The D.C. Circuit cleared her of all of the charges of misconduct, including this one.When the complaint was first filed, I defended Judge Jones. Defending her was relatively easy….
The arguments made in the complaint were rather flaccid. Even a little investigation revealed plenty of reasons to be skeptical about the self-serving and political motivations behind the complaint. Quite simply, she is a good woman who was being treated badly by people with bad arguments and worse proof. Many of the responses I received were supportive of both the judge and my defense of her. Plenty of others . . . were not.
Repeatedly — and in some cases, publicly — spectators shamed me for “defending a racist judge” and for harboring my own racism. No holds are barred in online comments sections, but I (perhaps foolishly) tried to engage some of the criticisms sent to me via email or direct message. Unfortunately, I quickly learned that accusing a person of racism, even without detailed knowledge, can create an irrebuttable presumption that the person is, indeed, racist. There was no way out of the spiral once a critic accused me (or my former boss) of racial bias. No evidence sufficed. What if a miscommunication is to blame? No, critics insisted that they knew what she or I really meant, no matter what I said now. A statement interpreted out of context? Nope. Critics insisted that no one should make statements that are at all susceptible to misinterpretation, even out of context. What about evidence of racial inclusion in one’s personal life? “Give me a break. ‘My best friend is black’ is the stalest defense there is,” was the reply.
Several people suggested that attending a predominantly black school as a white woman was itself a sign of my racism. As best as I could tell, this meant that, if I truly cared about black people, I would not have “taken the spot” of at student of color who might have been in my place, were it not for me...
http://abovethelaw.com/2014/10/how-edith-jones-helped-prove-eric-holder-right-lessons-i-learned-about-race-after-defending-a-judge-accused-of-racism/ |
