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BLACK JUDGES ON JUSTICE

PERSPECTIVES FROM THE BENCH

Washington, executive editor of the Philadelphia Tribune, conducted these interviews of black judges with the conviction that they would have an important and unique point of view of the judicial system. ``Teach'' vies with ``justice'' for the honor of most-used word in the book. Those polled here, who include such noted judges as Leon Higgenbotham and Constance Baker Motley, express their belief that as minority judges they have an obligation to reach out to black communities, to rekindle some faith in a system that is often perceived as the enemy. Of the 30,000 federal judges in the country, only 1,000 are black. Those interviewed here call for more minority judges, who would be needed role models and whose presence might enable minorities in the system to believe that they're getting a fair shake: A black who is judged in the court of another black can perhaps feel that justice has been done, not that he has been done in by the system. In addition, most insist that fixing problems in society would do more to reduce crime than would longer and more frequent incarcerations. Many of these judges are on the forefront of a movement to find sentencing alternatives, and most dislike mandatory sentencing. (Henry Bramwell is a rare exception here, believing there is no alternative to incarceration.) What emerges from the collection as a whole is a portrait of judges (including two women, who address the complexities of being a ``double minority'') whose own experiences of bias served as a motivation to participate in and improve the system rather than avoid it like the plague. Unfortunately, the transcribed interview format used here by Washington tends to blur the distinctions of voice that might better have emerged in written submissions. This is an uneven but insightful series of observations that, though generally liberal, covers the political and geographic spectrum.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995

ISBN: 1-56584-104-2

Page Count: 288

Publisher: The New Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994

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HOW TO FIGHT ANTI-SEMITISM

A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.

Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.

While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.

A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.

Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019

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ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN

Bernstein and Woodward, the two Washington Post journalists who broke the Big Story, tell how they did it by old fashioned seat-of-the-pants reporting — in other words, lots of intuition and a thick stack of phone numbers. They've saved a few scoops for the occasion, the biggest being the name of their early inside source, the "sacrificial lamb" H**h Sl**n. But Washingtonians who talked will be most surprised by the admission that their rumored contacts in the FBI and elsewhere never existed; many who were telephoned for "confirmation" were revealing more than they realized. The real drama, and there's plenty of it, lies in the private-eye tactics employed by Bernstein and Woodward (they refer to themselves in the third person, strictly on a last name basis). The centerpiece of their own covert operation was an unnamed high government source they call Deep Throat, with whom Woodward arranged secret meetings by positioning the potted palm on his balcony and through codes scribbled in his morning newspaper. Woodward's wee hours meetings with Deep Throat in an underground parking garage are sheer cinema: we can just see Robert Redford (it has to be Robert Redford) watching warily for muggers and stubbing out endless cigarettes while Deep Throat spills the inside dope about the plumbers. Then too, they amass enough seamy detail to fascinate even the most avid Watergate wallower — what a drunken and abusive Mitchell threatened to do to Post publisher Katherine Graham's tit, and more on the Segretti connection — including the activities of a USC campus political group known as the Ratfuckers whose former members served as a recruiting pool for the Nixon White House. As the scandal goes public and out of their hands Bernstein and Woodward seem as stunned as the rest of us at where their search for the "head ratfucker" has led. You have to agree with what their City Editor Barry Sussman realized way back in the beginning — "We've never had a story like this. Just never."

Pub Date: June 18, 1974

ISBN: 0671894412

Page Count: 372

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1974

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