"Black lives really do matter," he said. "The total disregard of that fact by any in our society is totally reprehensible."

He may be grossly inartful, but the *whole* article hardly shows he's a secret Klansman. Really wish people would stop falling for this. Another round of Smear the Ally.

Which is not true.

He grew up in the South with that around him, has probably notice them waning over the decades.

Pretty clear what he feels about people who respond with "All Lives Matter" are missing the point of "Black Lives Matter" and that (as a nation) no one is listening to the desperate plea from the black community for decency.

but not a different one?

We have a number of folks here in Philly who immigrated from Laos and Cambodia and Vietnam and whenever you hear about an axe or machete murder, 9 out of 10 times the perps were Asian against other Asians. Yet I never hear "Asian on Asian crime" and it is rampant. The media merely reports the names of the criminals and the victims and you can deduce it. But when it comes to African Americans, it's always "black on black crime".

A crime is a crime is a crime. And as long as the crime was not done primarily for racial/racist reasons, then it should not matter what race commits it against what race.

Black folk have made a decision to stop using such a divisive fucking term and others should too. it is used to perpetuate a myth that one race commits crimes more than another and masks the fact that crimes across the board committed by the majority population are generally unreported or under-reported or are not deemed a "crime". Unfortunately too many have been brainwashed to parrot the "black on black crime" bullshit.

You're going a long way to avoid acknowledging that he supports the Black Lives Matter movement. Again, why would he bring up any other race when this was literally a case about black-on-black. It's gross he used the term but don't dismiss the context he used it in. He used it as a launching point to lament the violence endured by the black community and to call out the people using All Live Matter as a rejoinder as missing the fucking point. His word choice was very poor, but he's an ally.

People are sick and fucking tired of "old white men" who spend their waking hours acting paternalistic.

"Black Lives Matter" has been a laser-focused movement about white police killing black men and women who were ultimately found to be unarmed and/or who had not actually committed a crime. Throwing out such a term to justify his racist and paternalistic discourse is like a white man burning a cross on a black family's lawn yet says he's not "racist" because he has a black girlfriend and he thought it would teach that family the history of such acts.



You are trying to defend the indefensible. The black community doesn't need white people to tell them what SOME communities (but not others) are going through, and doing such as a broad-brush of an entire racial group. Especially when you have at least 80% of the black population NOT impoverished or committing crime.

True "allies" get that.

We have had many many discussions here on DU about the difference between engaging as equals and engaging in a manner that suggests superiority over another and this guy is dripping with paternalism. And to continue to excuse it and dismiss it as using a "poor choice of words" doesn't suddenly make his inherent paternalism go away. It's just apologizing for someone who has had plenty of time throughout his life to understand the difference and has chosen not to change.

He's not just some name in an article, he's live a whole life filled with experiences and developed a vocabulary and language shaped by those experiences. We all are. During the 2008 campaign I worked with a guy who was in his 60s and was a full-on Obama supporter... that kept using negro. He grew up surrounded by that, I didn't. It was uncomfortable to say the least. But, I didn't judge him on his painfully unfortunate word choice, I judged him by the full context of his statements. He was elated when Obama won.

THAT makes a fucking difference and has nothing to do with "abstract". One of the very definitions of "racism" is not just prejudice against someone's race but someone who has the power to cause some negative impact on another person's life who is of a different race. I.e., the power to "enforce" those racist views by meting out extreme sentences or other crippling penalties.

And just because someone "likes" or voted for someone of a different race doesn't mean that they don't have some sort of prejudice or bias. However in this specific case, a "judge" is given power and authority and can use it to enforce his bias. And the fact that he felt free to invoke the "KKK" in a ridiculous analogy - and to do so to those who the KKK would have attacked and slaughtered, is over the top. I guarantee you that had he told Jewish defendants that they were acting worse than Hitler and Nazis, that judge would not only have gotten an earful, but a call from the ADL and others, and probably would have been suspended.

I won't help you build the bonfire, sorry.

I provided a real-life analogy of a person who grew up in different times, who recognized and accepted that those times have passed and a new one has begun, but has the misfortune of being Human and subject to ways and words they grew up with. This judge gets it too, but being Human he bumbled his way right into this mess. He's a judge and that carries heightened responsibilities, yes, but he's Human too. I will not help you pillory him for making a painfully dumb mistake.

because people CAN change and he has chosen not to.

Strom Thurmond went to his deathbed refusing to publicly acknowledge his black daughter. He was a coward to the end. Meanwhile George Wallace went to his deathbed essentially begging forgiveness. The bullet he took allowed him to see the light - and that contrition was accepted by a number of people whose sphere he negatively impacted.

Many of us have had enough. And that includes generations and generations of my family.

"Black lives really do matter," he said. "The total disregard of that fact by any in our society is totally reprehensible."

I mean my god, he was wearing a white hood and had a burning cross in the middle of his court when he said that...

And there's the fact he has some black ancestry (Free Man post-Civil War). Might've given him some familial perspective on BLM to be supportive of it and what it represents: A call for decency and equality, because I'm sure he's seen plenty of the opposite in his time (not directed AT him, of that we can mostly be certain, but possible he's been attacked for being a "half-breed" because that's how racists think genetics works). The man said something stupid, but you're flatly painting him as a binary caricature. Either he's a woke saint, or the devil incarnate. He's Human. He did a dumb Human thing. But underneath his poor choice of words, he's an ally. In life. And he's had enough of the abuse the black community has long suffered, that he's witnessed in his life. That's why he ranted. That's why he's frustrated that no one is listening to BLM.

who chose to not only compare the Ku Klux Klan to the behavior of the very people who the Klan attacked, but claimed they were worse. And I think you have put far to much focus on BLM, which is but one of thousands of organizations that were formed over the centuries to deal with civil rights violations of all sorts. However a mere spouting of support for such is not a "Get out of being a racist card".

Perhaps a reevaluation of your own perspectives are in order.

...I'll stick to viewing the world as a whole spectrum.

because I pity your weak arguments in support of the OP article's judge, who is a textbook example of someone who fits the popular internet term "wypipo".

Given how broken and subject to abuse the jury system is, you'd likely succeed. An alert on any of my posts here would strain credulity. What we are doing is arguing the other is wrong and why the other is wrong. What you're suggesting is abusing the alert system in order to "win" the argument. Good lord take a step back from yourself and good hard look at what you just said.

Eating. Our. Own.

You seem to be deeply invested in this individual and that reflects in the rancor and defensiveness of your discourse... and it is certainly a waste of my time to continue the ridiculous back and forth.

He was such a hateful, vicious little person. Hated what he was for years and years, and was shocked to see someone actually took a shot at him. It's usually HIS kind of people who do that to others.

Everything about him was horrifying. He lived to hate, it seemed.

Just to learn the day did come, when he was still among us that he actually understood how insanely wrong he had been is astonishing.

I think the reason he told the lady at the library of images and information about civil rights struggling undoubtedly came from his deepest sense of shame, and recognition there was NOTHING he could say which would explain how he could have been so horrible.

Hope a lot of people will see this post, read the information, and tell others.

Thank you, BumRush, if I may use the shortened form of your name!

after that assassination attempt, it essentially rendered him in continual pain for the rest of his life (just over 25 years post-shooting) and I expect that is what finally broke him. One of the most difficult things for the most vain to do, is to admit being wrong, and he was certainly stubborn.

When you scan through his life, he had 3 marriages, the 1st ending when his wife died of uterine cancer and the last 2 ending in divorce.

His physical travails finally helped him to gain empathy for the suffering of others as it's the lack of empathy that feeds the hate that we saw then and see today. I think in many cases, it is a way they found to cope with their own adversity - by projecting their own anger and hurt from things that happened to them during their lives, onto others, to make other people suffer the way they are suffering (mentally and/or physically). And when they are in positions of power, then doing this makes it even more painful for those who face that kind of projected vengeful wrath.

If he'd left out the black-on-black comment, everyone here would be commending him for his statement on Black Lives Matters and the people that dismiss it. His statement on the Klan? Looked to me like he was dismissing them as a greatly weakened force to the point of almost irrelevant. But no, he had to say something stupid and clumsy. Round and round we go, eating our own.

as "white on white crime". Whether they are stealing Amazon boxes off of someone's porch or slashing car tires or attempting to lure young girls into their van. Yet this judge has chosen to use a ridiculous and overused RW term to manufacture thread-bare ugly stereotypes.

thank you.

and this particular phrase seemed to take root in earnest under Raygun with ilk like Pat Buchanan and Bill O'Reilly and many RW mouthpieces pushing the line... But it leaves out the fact that thanks to both dejure and defacto segregation, most people live in communities with others who are predominately their own race. So "crime" will ultimately happen the most within those communities, whether they are almost all-black or almost all-white or whatever, just due to convenient proximity.

When the Palin family goes wacky - Tripp Palin beating up his father or Track Palin beating up his girlfriend, it's never called "white on white crime". When you had 4 white family members kill 8 white members of another family in a small rural OH town, it wasn't called "white on white crime". The final outcome of this latter story was conveniently "buried" under the massive coverage of our "blue wave".

Any violence crime is horrible, but to say the KKK is less violent is senile.

Another privileged member of the good ole boys club, in love with the patricharcy and way past his sell by date.

I'm sure I knew this guy when I lived there. However, age and time have left my memory with little to go on. Don't recall any red flags, though, as opposed to the city council member there that was perpetually inviting myself, and others over to check out his civil war collection.

"It isn't the first time Shelton has expressed that sentiment that from the bench.Although he's been saying "black lives matter" for years, he lamented Thursday that no one is listening."

His word choice was incredibly stupid, but that he came out swinging FOR Black Lives Matter should be the telling part in all this. The black-on-black and the Klan comments are just sad reflections of what he grew up surrounded by, but his BLM statement shows to me at least that *despite* all that he wishes the conversation would become positive, that everything he lived were no longer the norm but spoken of as past history. Talk about no one listening...

If the thing that brings "shame" to the Klan is the number of blacks being killed by them is lower than by other blacks, then the real shame is in the judge's perception.

He has been so white all his life, he can't hear what his opinions sound like, however well-meaning he thinks they are. This is not an ally.