74 Comments

The systemic racism in the American judicial system is widely known. For a Black jurist to be sanctioned for pointing it out is probably the epitome of racist oppression.

The GOP has decided that rather than address racism it would rather oppress those who expose it.

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Exactly. That way if no one is talking about it and no one sees anything, it (racism) no longer exists.

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For the GOP it is all about winning. It is a racist organization that appeals to racists in its base. This is racism combined with a "do whatever it takes to win" attitude. Sad and despicable.

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I can promise you that North Carolina, like much of the rest of the South including Georgia, is exactly as Anita Earls describes it. Thank you for featuring this very disturbing case. It is so indicative of the time in which we are living, and the blind and conscious discrimination that a majority of citizens of color face.

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19 AG'S are sending letters( and starting lawsuits) to Fortune 500 companies because they are hiring with diversified candidates and they don't like that !! They only want WASPs ( white Anglo-Saxon people) and put the rest of people that are not white back down in the basement !! The repugnants and their cronies ( donors ) want this ! They want the genteel days of watching their slaves in the field's picking cotton while their maids serve them their mint julep !! Guess what no one is going back to that ! It's 2023 and we the people are tired of the lies , misinformation and utter bullshit spewed from the mouths of douche bags !! People , vote blue please !!

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A few thoughts...

I would love it if reporters asked white racists about their racism as much as they ask black people about it. Point out examples & don’t let them dismiss it. Ask them how they’ll address it & fix it the way they ask us to fix someone wises problem. (Imagine asking an abused spouse how they’ll address & fix being hit. Ask the f’ing abuser)!

The implicit dismissal of professional women in nearly any field is well known. Interrupted, downplayed, challenged by arrogant, less experienced & less qualified people, walking on eggshells not to threaten fragile folks, etc. There’s still a “get in the kitchen, little lady” mentality underlying our culture, esp when it comes to authoritative & power-hungry conservative white men. For black women, all of this + “get in the field, before I whip you, inferior creature.”

We are constantly code switching & adjusting to mitigate the fear & stereotypes & almost inherent disrespect of our blackness. A challenge of status quo = an angry black woman. Speaking with conviction & clarity = implied warnings that we are going beyond the box we are allowed to be in, in THEIR space. Speaking truth of our career experiences = how dare you have a view and leads to “investigations” & threats of sanctions. Suddenly the “code of conduct” matters & is applied. (By the same people who support an open criminal).

It is exhausting for us to build a career and life around the fragility & bias of a white male dominated America...

I appreciate the awareness & exposure to such stories. I appreciate non-racist people seeking to understand & being a voice or at least not being part of the problem. Sigh.

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Well said.

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Thank you for this comment! It is exhausting!

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Formidable words Tiff. Agreed indeed!

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It's just confounding how many layers of putrid behavior by so-called conservatives is being revealed of late. It's almost like someone in leadership gave them permission to allow their covert racist and misogynistic tendencies to openly bloom and grow...hmm. Popular Information sheds light in these darkest of corners and I sincerely hope you continue doing so.

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I hope progressive North Carolinians, of which there are many, come to the defense of Justice Earls. She’s a lonely voice on the bench. I’m grateful she spoke up about the micro aggressions directed at her regularly, as well as the systemic racism that is playing out in the court. Oh, if only Cheri Beasley had won her bid to remain chief justice.

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And precisely why is N. Carolina Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls being threatened with sanctions?

C'mon! It's not a trick question. You already know why and it's a dirty damn shame.

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We are watching this closely here in NC. Remember, this is the same state where we had a state senator switch from D to R after being elected. Republicans are flexing their atrophied muscles and flailing about, going straight-up authoritarian when given the chance. The thing about NC is that we are definitely not Florida or Tennessee. Our governor, Roy Cooper, is a moderate and pragmatic Democrat. Let's hope authoritarian actions like these lead to voter turnout in 2024. We will be sending these wannabe autocrats home.

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I hope so but that veto power is weakened greatly thanks to that treacherous traitor Cotham.

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I like Roy Cooper a lot. I really think he did the best he could given the circumstances. However, I'm very disheartened that Josh Stein, despite having done real, concrete good for the state (Chemours, the opioid lawsuits, etc) is polling behind that bigoted idiot Mark Robinson. It's hard to have hope in this scenario.

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3 words

Lewis Powell Memo

Look it up, read it, use it

The conservatives and with the libertarian take over are using it to destroy the American Experiment and replace it with their own cultish ideology.

Facts be damned in economics, public assistance, education, foreign policy, and anything else.

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Wow...this is really pretty horrifying, and he was on SCOTUS! I guess Gingrich and crew just embraced this toxic agenda full on. Will need to study it bit more when my stomach settles down. Thank you for the info.

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Thom Hartmann is the first writer that brought it to my attention. He has written about it extensively. The Federalists and Heritage groups use it to plan their actions whose roots are based in the John Birch Society and funded with Koch company monies. All roads lead back to the Kochs and the quiet, at first, coalition they have built.

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From what I've read, the Koch's, their foundations underwrite & support much of the bad policies PASSED by legislators, who take their campaign money. When you take their money when running for office, you must embrace their agenda; passing laws/policies like "right to work" state laws, to name one. (Misnomer if I ever heard one). These laws & policies ONLY BENEFIT CORPORATIONS. Not employees.

In addition, who do you think is pushing for laws in states, like Arkansas, Missouri & other Southern & Midwestern parts of our nation, lowering the age of child workers, increasing working hours for children who are still in school & in some instances taking away parental rights to sign off on some of these recent changes. They not only want to tap into younger child labor; but to pay them less as well as allowing them to work in more dangerous jobs. Many Republican states are apparently on board with these corporations..Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Arkansas in particular..her willingness probably bought & paid for with future campaign $$. I wonder what she'd think about her young teenage daughter or son, working in a dangerous industrial plant? But with their money & connections, they'd never have to do so. The haves vs the have nots. Two sets of expectations & rules. Too often, two vastly different futures.

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More and more, and all for me and mine, and nothing for you and yours. Read somewhere that "people are poor, hungry, or don't have basic things not because they dont work, or out of their faults but because the billionaires can't, and won't be satisfied". Forgive me that I don't remember the exact quote.

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Greedy, selfish people, where nothing, no amount of money or things are ever enough, imo, leaves people very myopic; especially when it comes to sharing a bit with those who have nothing. For some, it's simply about collecting things, (money, power, toys). In the end, we all end up 6 feet under (or cremated) and IF there is a reckoning ( & I believe somehow there is) those that didn't feel compelled to help or share, where & when they had the chance, will find out what their greed for money & things bought them...karma wise..Again, my personal feeling is there is a reckoning for hateful, selfish behavior...but that's my opinion.

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I too believe that what goes around comes around. And all that we send into the universe comes back to us. But I know atleast one person who thinks life is here and now, and there's no afterlife or incarnations. lt seems that a person's actions are dictated by his/her beliefs system and that's accrued over lifetimes. I have realized that a person, I didn't know existed, comes into life and helps/harms according to our past accounts, hence this life is to settle accounts, of past innumerous lives, and hopefully be done forever. Obviously those who don't believe in this aren't mindful.

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So true. Give Kochland a read if you can. There was one instance that a very successful co-op had some difficulty through some bad management and the Kochs swooped in and bought it. They proceeded to villainize the co-op idea as a reason to destroy it costing the members thousands of dollars and then raising costs of services to increase their profits. They are full on capitalist fascist.

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A look into the employment history of the 'bad manager' may be enlightening. Trump was the quintessential 'bad manager' making every decision, antithetical to the agency mission.

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I have not read that particular book (Kochland); but thank you for the suggestion. I'll definitely get a copy. Be well.

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Yes, always follow the money. It answers every question.

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That's where I first heard of it too. Thom is on WCPT in Chicago between 1-3pm Monday - Friday. An excellent source of information.

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And in 2023 it's repackaged as 'project 2025', and it's even more terrifying. Don't, can't understand why billionaires and many privileged people aren't happy inspite of having more than they need/want, and don't let others exist without constantly trying and slowly achieving to take away whatever minimum the ordinary people have.

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I you like the Memo, you’ll love the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Preparing for the next GOP president & decimation of the Civil Service in order to accomplish the agenda articulated by Steve Bannon.

“Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the administrative state.”

https://www.heritage.org/press/project-2025-continues-grow-60-partners-preparing-next-presidential-administration

Reported elsewhere that several GOP candidates Presidential candidates are been apprise.

https://www.heritage.org/press/project-2025-continues-development-presidential-administration-academy

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Thanks. I have read it and saved for future reference and the inevitable "I told you so."

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Go get 'em Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls. It is about time someone stood up to these clueless folk.

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More like standing up Bullies. Have the White Christian Ruling Class shown the door for their outdated fantasized ambitions of being the masters of the judiciary.

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So glad I left NC, it was hateful and spiteful and racist back then--with a few lovely people sprinkled throughout, and I gave it 20 years of my life. I kind of wish the south had actually seceded. The culture is so different--and they have never stopped fighting 'the war'. Hindsight being 20/20, had the south actually broken away from the US years ago, we may not be in the racist, hateful mess we are in now. But maybe that's the orange racist kool-aid effect and his power grabbing corrupt sycophants and the fox/bannon/breitbart/social media kool aid drinkers. Now I need coffee.

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I was born in NC in 1948 and left in 1968, my 20 years there. I attended UNC Chapel Hill for five semesters as a recipient of a John Motley Morehead Scholarship, which at the time was a racist, sexist, anti-Semitic disgrace for which I had no moral strength at the time to refuse; I needed the money. I left UNC for professional reasons. Skipping over Vietnam and the last 50 years of systematic destruction of the New Deal by racist oligarchs and their vile Republican accomplices, we now find ourselves in the midst of organized right-wing terror that would make Jesse Helms cheer from his grave. This is not temporary. It will not end well, or soon.

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Heidi, as to your secession theory, the South DID break away from the union in 1865. It never came back. It simply re-organized itself to sustain its white oligarchy. The South hasn't risen again. It never fell. That's why they're fighting so hard not to lose now.

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I completely agree.

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There was that brief time of sunlight under the post Civil War Reconstruction, but white supremacy reared it’s ugly head and using force and political power, it subjugated Black people again.

Those who want to continue that reign of terror have not given up. To the contrary; they elected trump and are now trying to re-elect him.

We have to come out in force at the polls and beat these people again and again and again.

If not, full scale civil war will break out again.

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I agree with you, it's very sad and scary too.

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I think you would find Chapel Hill and UNC today to be a wholly different place than you left in 1968. In fact, my impression after 6 years frequently visiting my son there as he worked toward his PhD is that the area is a bastion of Progressivism and I was always comfortable there. North Carolina would be bright red were it not for the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area and the schools within.

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That has pretty much always been the case. Chapel Hill in the mid-sixties had weekly 'silent vigils' on Franklin Street to oppose the Vietnam war. People just stood there silently. The difference now is that the anti-Progressives are well armed. This situation with Justice Earls is not an isolated case of intimidation. It is part of widespread, organized terror in countless forms. Look at Florida. Look at Tennessee. Look at Texas. And so on. The Heritage Foundation has taken the Supreme Court. It will take many years, if ever, to recover from this.

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Not just the Triangle. The urban areas of NC tend to be purple if not blue. This state is gerrymandered to hell, so the impact of those areas are really diluted. That's even before that treacherous garbage human from Mecklenburg...

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Fifteen years ago, I worked with Family Court judges in Charlotte and had the opportunity to attend a statewide meeting convened by then Chief Justice Sarah Parker, on issues of racial implicit bias in the courts. So sad to see great work being undone.

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There is no excellence without accountability. Questioning (and addressing) racial and gender bias in a system produces a better system, a more excellent system.

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Again, Judd, you are able to unearth a deep and dangerous injustice that more of our world can learn about and address. The increasing power of Republican racism deserves to be exposed so that North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls and others with her courage and intelligence have their voices heard. There have to be other "white males" who can use their power stand on the side of justice. I'm reminded of Trump early in his administration firing Preet Bahara in his attempt to find "loyalty." I'm reflecting on the unwitting foolishness of the FBI's Comey and Robert Mueller. Power depends on more than being on the right side of Justice--it requires effective speaking out. Go Anita!

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When will the Republican Terror end? Not any time soon, I'm afraid.

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How do we fix this corruption

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Daylight is a good start. There is a practice among polite southern society, certain topics do not rise to mention. The self censorship is a form of collusion.

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💯 when they say we don't discuss politics at the table I now continue because at this point that is how they keep it up! Daylight is a great start thank u!

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Thanks Judd. Interesting to me because we essentially have Supreme Court chief justices; essentially on the take from their billionaire benefactors. But when a justice speaks out about observations made as a judge, in the North Carolina judicial system; respect to how lawyers & justices that are either female and black (or white), are treated differently than their male, white counterparts, that's violating some code of conduct they supposedly have, respect to speaking to the press. To me it suggests, "don't air out North Carolina's very dirty, racist, sexist laundry."

Yet I wonder if these white, male (republican) counterparts have spoken out against the conduct of SC justices Alito or Thomas? Somehow, I doubt it. I have lived in the South for 38 years. ( the Northern climate didn't agree with my health.) Though racism & sexism may not be as blatant as it was 60-70 years ago, it's spectre still haunts us daily, in particular in our judicial & legal systems. My understanding was, this was meant to be A place where the intention is for JUSTICE to be blind. Given our prisons are filled with minorities ( blacks & hispanics), the composition of our countries population being largely white, suggests justice is not color blind. We've heard all too often of white counterparts ( especially the wealthy) in the court system, getting off with much reduced jail time vs. minority counterparts charged with similar charges.

Yet while court justices like Alito & Thomas, who've violated many ethical standards & essentually taken bribes from billionaires who's cases they've presided over (and not recused themselves;) they remain free to enjoy their ill gotten gains. To state an old cliche, "there's something wrong with this picture."

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