Court Questions On Race Were Misplaced And Offensive, Judges Say
Leonie Lamont, smh.com.au (Australia), Jul. 7
The state’s highest criminal court has berated a 71-year-old judge for his questions about race during a sentencing hearing, saying they were inappropriate and “preposterous and offensive”.
The comments split the Court of Criminal Appeal, with one of the judges finding the line of questioning so inappropriate that the sentencing procedure had miscarried.
The criticism of the District Court judge, William Thomas Ducker, followed an appeal by a young man known as TR, who had pleaded guilty to a charge of grievous bodily harm committed when he was 16.
TR, of white/Pacific Islander heritage, pleaded guilty to the assault on a white man, Chrisher Williams, 18. He had alleged Mr Williams described himself as a Nazi who hated blacks, provoking the attack.
Last August Judge Ducker sentenced TR to three years and six months in a juvenile institution.
But it was his questions and remarks on the issue of race that raised the ire of the appeals court judges, even though they dismissed TR’s appeal against his sentence. One of the two majority judges, Justice John Dunford, rejected TR’s appeal, but said: “Some of the questions suggested that His Honour was minimising the significance or offensiveness of racist slurs, particularly when directed at Aborigines or other persons with darker skin.”
The judge who upheld the appeal, Michael Adams, took strong issue with Judge Ducker’s description of Mr Williams’s racist slur as “hurtful and annoying”. Rather, Judge Adams said, it was a “contemptuous, derisory and insulting dismissal of [TR’s] worth as a human being”.
During the sentencing, Judge Ducker questioned a youth worker who was counselling TR.
“Do you not find that, in many instances, those who claim to be affronted by racial slurs do so on the basis that it is somehow inferior to be called black? That they think there is something wrong about being called black?” the judge asked at one point.
“How would you feel if an Aboriginal person called somebody, for instance ‘You white bastard’?”
Justice Adams said: “The suggestion that there is no real difference in offensiveness between being pejoratively called a white by . . . a black man and being called a black by a white man disregards even the most facile understanding of black/white relationships in this country . . . the suggestion that Europeans might feel equally offended . . . is to trivialise the grave moral culpability of racism and the enormous suffering it has inflicted.”
Judicial education on aboriginal cultural awareness has been available since the Aboriginal Deaths in Custody royal commission, said the head of the Judicial Commission of NSW, Ernie Schmatt.
Judge Ducker retired at the beginning of last year. He remains an acting judge based in Lismore.
Comments from Readers
From: Rich
Reading stuff like this makes me angry and sad. How can otherwise intelligent people fail to see the double standard here? This is competitive altruism at it’s worst.
From: samkit
“”The suggestion that there is no real difference in offensiveness between being pejoratively called a white by . . . a black man and being called a black by a white man disregards even the most facile understanding of black/white relationships in this country”
you don’t need to understand that past relationship. racism against blacks is racism. racism against whites is racism. is that really so hard to understand?
From: Walter E. Wallis
Equality or nothing. To use the force of the government to enforce inequality between races in either direction is wrong. If it is not wrong, then It’s all right for me to advocate my position.
From: Drew
I’ve noticed a difference when it comes to the different races slinging racial slurs at one another. It’s really hard to come up with a good racial slur to call a white person. On the other hand, whites can think up all types of racial slurs to throw at the different colored people.
What really bothers me are the things that blacks will say when they are expressing their feelings. “One bullet, one settler! and Kill Whitey! come to mind.
From: Frank
The proposal here is that white racism and black racism MUST be equal because they are both racism.
That is similar to insisting Jaguars and Suzukis are equal because they are both automobiles.
White racism over the last 100 or 200 years has unquestionably denied equal opportunity, access and receipt in, to and of education, employment, housing and police protection, among other things, to blacks. Can the same be said of black racism?
Think of terms used – do any of you as whites have any idea of what is implied by the term “ofay”, a black epithet for whites? In other words, what does it mean to you and how much of an insult is it?
Now consider the infamous n-word, nig-ger. Have any idea what is implied by the use of this term? How much of an insult would it be for you to be referred to as a nig-ger or perhaps even a nig-ger lover? How much of an insult do you think this is to blacks?
Do any of you honestly believe that it is just as insulting and disrespectful for a white to be called ofay as it is for a black to be called nig-ger? Would you fight a black for calling you ofay?
From: Invictus
The reason why “nigger” is so much more powerful an insult than any word directed at whites is that blacks are so much more deserving of insult than whites are. When you insult a black, the word hits the target. When they try to respond in kind, it misses. This appears to be what the judge who was admonished by the court was trying to communicate.
Furthermore, American blacks have clearly caused more damage to whites than the other way around. They kill 800 to 1000 of us every year. They chase us out of our neighborhoods. They turn our popular culture into filth. They ruin our schools. They raise our taxes. When anyone tries to talk sense about the matter, they call it “racism,” making sanity itself seem evil and making us distrust all of our natural instincts. As far as denying them opportunity goes, what kind of opportunity would they have had had we left them in Africa?
From: Laknei
I find Frank’s post to be an offensive attempt to justify a double-standard. He basically says “whites have been naughty and therefore deserve (or should allow themselves) to be insulted”.
Though Frank doesn’t state his ethnicity, I can only speculate from the tone of his post that he is himself white. If so, then I might ask if he has oppressed blacks and deserves to be insulted and assaulted? If not, then how can he justify the same against others?
If I’m incorrect in my assumption that Frank is white, the answer is simpler- he’s just a bigot.
From: Sigurd
“That is similar to insisting Jaguars and Suzuki’s are equal because they are both automobiles.”
Or like insisting whites and blacks are equal in all abilities because they are both human beings.
Anyone who argues that there is a moral discrepancy between “when your people hate another people” and “when another people hate your people” (apparently, the latter somehow being less moral then the former-particularly when you desire your own annihilation) is not broaching a serious argument. The PC morals that dominate the day are not morals that work in the interest of white survival and survival in general.
Frank, how do you imagine that you will win people to your side, by arguing that their bigotries are more “evil” then the bigotries against them? It’s an absolute slap in the face. It’s akin to saying they are morally less valuable then the people that hate them-justifying their destruction is an easy next step.
From: Nostradamus Smith
Invictus, you are too kind to blacks. Blacks actually kill 1600 to 2000 whites each year. And that’s in cases where the perp was positively identified. There are scores of “stranger murders”, usually robberies, every year. These generally have no witnesses, but law enforcement officials generally assume that due to location, history, M.O., similarity to other crimes in each area and so on that the perps are overwhelmingly black (or “hispanic”). The biggest myth is that most murder victims are killed by people they know. No, it’s the majority of homicides that are solved are those in which the victim and killer knew each other. The number of unsolved homicides, incidents in which some black or brown killer just walks up and kills a white (or wver) takes their money and runs is frightening.
From: Winston McCuen
As the best political thinkers have pointed out, order is a higher value than individual liberty, and true liberty is a Providential reward for actualized moral and intellectual virtue. So it is foolish to call unjust those rational, order-preserving restrictions placed on a barbarous and semi-barbarous African segment living in a European white polity. Blacks, left to their own, have never achieved anything like government by rule of law, or the limitations that true constitutional government involve. As Calhoun and others recognized, American slavery was a “great” and “positive” good, and served the entire society, including the slaves, because, unlike mindless egalitarianism, it acknowledged the great differences in moral character and intelligence that existed at the time, and which are deeply rooted in sheer natural, genetic capacity.
From: Frank
Indeed I do believe there should be a double standard – and I would have thought the questions I posed, if answered honestly, would illustrate the reasonableness of accepting such a double standard.
Unfortunately, only one person even pretended to address the issues I brought up in my questions – this response was “blacks are so much more deserving of insult than whites are”
It is obvious reasonable argument cannot serve in this venue, where I am accused of bigotry, apparently because I do not disbelieve that :”whites and blacks are equal in all abilities because they are both human beings”
Poor Invictus – chased out of your neighborhood by a black man?
Laknei – I am not insulted and assulted by blacks because I treat blacks as equals. They have no reason to treat me differently than I treat them.
Sigurd – Ahh, “morals that do not work in the interest of white survival”. You believe these distinguishable from morals that act in the interest of “general survival”, since you made the distinction. At the same time, you are unable to make the distinction between white racism and black bigotry. Why?
Nostradamus – Your post is rife with falsehood and illogic and simply needs no response.
Winston – “order is a higher value than individual liberty” Enjoy your time in prison did you? You leave out that order is only of higher value to those who give the orders. “the great differences in moral character and intelligence that existed at the time” This would be the intelligence that invented racialist myths and the “moral character” that allowed for the rape of black women, the brutalization and murder of black men and the destruction of black families. I do not think you know what mopral character means.
From: Frank
Here is an analogy that maybe you can understand.
A punches B and knocks him down. B attempts to stand so A punches B and knocks him down again. B attempts to stand and A hits B with baseball bat. B attempts to stand, so A shoots B, then hits with bat again. This is repeated 50 times. Finally B succeeds in standing up and punches A in the nose. A says “No fair. Once B stands up we’re even.”
The point of view I see espoused here is that the single punch in the nose by B must be seen as just as bad as the cumulative 50 punches, gun shots and baseball bat blows delivered by A. Seemingly, no one understands that maybe A had it coming to him.
From: John P. M.
To Frank,
“In 1987, white criminals chose black victims in 3 percent of violent crimes, while black criminals chose white victims fifty percent of the time.
When the crime was rape, white criminals chose black women 0 percent of their assaults, while black criminals chose white women in 28 percent of assaults. Of eighty-three thousand cases of rape, Wilbanks could not find any in which the rapist was white and the victim was black.
White criminals chose black victims in 2 percent of their robberies; but black criminals chose white victims in 73 percent of their robberies.” (Patrick J. Buchanan, The Death of the West, pg 69.)
Just some food for thought, and I hope you get my point. Oh, but “A had it coming to him”? How utterly absurd!
From: Cassiodorus
Frank’s analogy is foolish and inapt in ways typical of “anti-racist” pseudo-argumentation. It postulates two individuals as representatives of entire races, as if there were one white man whose life span comprised “100 or 200 years.” (Why so inexact, anyway? The worlds of 1804 and of 1904 were rather different.) Further, the analogy assumes unrelenting hostility towards blacks on the part of this evil white man. The fact is that the alleged wickedness has exactly no bearing on the lives of contemporary blacks, a vast number of whose births are paid for by medicaid, ie. by white handouts. Thereafter their housing, food and schooling are supported in great disproportion by whites, lest they have to endure the indignity of supporting themselves. They are then given preferences in college applications and jobs, arenas in which standards are drastically lowered just for them. A vast, unconstitutional government bureaucracy caters wholly to blacks’ every “need” or perceived injustice (ie. limited access to white women or cadillacs) by wholly destroying the civil freedoms of whites, who may not rent to whom they please, hire whom they please or educate their children in a manner consistent with their notions of civilization. What is the response of black America to this undeserved charity? Several million crimes a year, a 70% illegitimacy rate, and an ever-growing African-style anti-civilizational blight spreading over every city in the nation. Who’s hitting whom, Frank? And please, no silly rants about Jim Crow.
