My “note” at the end of this post has engendered quite a bit of discussion about Trump’s remarks accusing Judge Gonzalo Curiel of bias. First, let me repeat a bit of what I wrote there:
Trump’s “racist” comment about the judge was to say that he had “an absolute conflict” because he was “of Mexican heritage” and a member of a Latino law association…It’s a question of Trump’s attacking someone’s identity as a member of an ethnic group rather than sticking to that person’s specific beliefs.
I want to emphasize a couple of things that I didn’t point out in the previous post. The first is about Trump’s phrase “absolute conflict.” Trump didn’t say “possible conflict.” He used the word “absolute,” which does not admit of any doubt, equivocation, or gradation. It indicates something complete, given, absolute.
Whatever Trump actually meant by this in the recesses of his brain, we have to assume he said what he meant and he meant what he said, which is that Mexican heritage acts as an absolute bar to hearing any lawsuit connected with Donald Trump, an assertion that is (to use a phrase I ordinarily detest) un-American and goes against the principles on which our laws are based [see NOTE* below]. It is identity politics, a sort of mirror image of what the left does, which is to claim (for example) that a privileged white man cannot have an unbiased opinion about a black person but is automatically racist.
Unfortunately, we have traveled quite far down that road anyway, because statements like that one about white male bias are made every single day. That doesn’t make them right, and it doesn’t make Trump’s statement right, either.
What should Trump have said (not that he ever would have done it this way)? Say what the judge has done that he thinks is biased. Ruling against the Great Trump is not enough. Say exactly what organization the judge is part of and mention some of the biased positions it holds. Describe how all of that might tie in to the case the judge is hearing. It wouldn’t take long to do this; doesn’t have to be a book. But unless it’s done, and if you say instead that some ill-defined bias is due to the judge’s “Mexican heritage,” or just some Latino law association that “supports Mexico,” you haven’t done the job nearly well enough and you open yourself to charges of racism that seem very very plausible.
And by the way, for what it’s worth, that Latino law group is not the same one as the larger La Raza left-wing radical organization nor is it affiliated with it. The most you can say (and it isn’t all that much) is that the law group’s website contains a link the other group.
I think that there is a good possibility that Trump’s statements about Judge Curiel have hurt him more than most of the un-PC things he’s said in the past. You know why? Because the subject he’s talking about is not a principle such as illegal immigration or PC-speech or the like, it’s about a case””that of Trump University being accused of fraud””in which Trump already is looking bad. To imagine a judge ruling against him in that case without being the least bit biased against him is not difficult. It’s easy. So this charge against Curiel looks like the usual Trump practice of throwing the book at anyone who might thwart him.
One more thing—have you noticed many Republicans in Congress and elsewhere trying to thread the impossible needle of Trump-support? Support him and you’re tarred with everything he says and does. Don’t support him and you’re a traitor. It hurts every single one of them in some way; there is no good path out of it. It is potentially very damaging to the right as a whole (actually, I think it’s already been damaging to the right as a whole).
Just as one example of what I mean—Chris Christie is reduced to defending Trump’s Curiel remarks by saying that Trump has “a right” to express his opinion. Well, duh! Of course he does, and everyone else has a right to listen to Trump’s opinion and draw the conclusions they think are logical.
So far Ted Cruz isn’t having any of it, by the way. Probably because Cruz knows that he’s already regarded as persona non grata by a lot of his colleagues, he doesn’t need to worry about being called a traitor to the GOP cause. Been there, done that. So when asked about whether he would ever endorse Trump, he simply stared in silence.
[NOTE: One area in which the legal system is not color-blind is in jury selection. Because of a long history of black people being excluded from juries that are supposed to be of the defendants’ “peers,” there has long been an effort to have juries be composed of an ethnic and gender mix that reflects the community. Whatever you think of that effort, it is very different from claiming that any particular one juror would be automatically or absolutely biased because of his/her race, ethnicity, or gender. It is an effort at inclusion of the previously-barred, not exclusion of a certain group.
Lawyers, however, get a certain number of what’s called “peremptory challenges” in the process of jury selection, which means they can get a prospective juror dismissed for any reason whatsoever—unless those challenges show a pattern of exclusion based on race. It’s a legally complex issue—too complex to go into here—but see this article for more.
The point with juries is not that people of a certain race are automatically biased, it’s that people of a certain race or origin should not be excluded from a jury for that reason, and that actual bias in terms of specific action or beliefs has to be demonstrated or at least suggested (particularly for non-peremptory challenges), rather than bias based on a person’s identity.]
[ADDENDUM: Please see this comment of mine and read the links, particularly this one which describes the history of the legal association of which Judge Curiel is a member.]
[ADDENDUM II: I have noticed that some people seem to be confusing La Raza with the Reconquista groups. There is some overlap, and you can read up yourself on the extent of the affiliation, which La Raza now denies (rightly or wrongly). I have done some reading on it, and while I think there is no question that some Reconquista advocates must also be members of La Raza, the two groups officially focus on and advocate different things. Reconquistas are the Hispanic supremicist groups who explicitly want to re-take the lands they feel the US took away from Mexico. La Raza is an advocacy group that is more analogous to the current leftist advocacy makeup of the NAACP.]
) and always loved these two photos in particular.
