Judge Says Juvenile Arrest OBVIOUS Outcome Of Liking The Rap Music

Judge reaches into bag of stereotypes for cringey hearing.

Every article you’re going to see in the coming days about Judge Alex Kim of Tarrant County, Texas — including, frankly, this one — is going to be ripping his casual deployment of racially loaded stereotypes and willingness to go ahead and come right out and say it in open court. So let’s take a few seconds to focus on the places where Judge Kim not only gets it right, but proves to be a better and more conscientious judge than many of his peers around the country.

The case at hand involves a 16-year-old defendant allegedly caught in a stolen car in possession of a gun. From the Fox 4 News review:

At one point, District Court Judge Alex Kim encouraged the youngster, who wanted to make statements, to remain quiet.

Stifling a defendant attempting to be heard may sound like a bad move, but Judge Kim appeared to be actually acting in the defendant’s best interests here:

“I’m just trying to protect you,” the judge told him. “We have a DA, a prosecutor that’s listening to things, and I don’t want the prosecutor to get too much information about you. Ok?”

With a Supreme Court content to whittle Miranda down to the point where cop shows don’t even feel the need to pretend it’s real, this judge went out of his way to not only remind the defendant of his rights, but to explain why it’s a good idea to remain silent. Most Americans don’t understand how Miranda rights work in the first place and a juvenile is one of the most likely defendants to accidentally incriminate themselves while trying to argue their way out of a situation. More judges should afford defendants this sort of protection — even if the defendant isn’t a juvenile appearing for the first time.

Judge Kim also sent the boy home with his mom. Black defendants are detained pre-trial at a wildly disproportionate rate. The severity of the crime involved has less impact on judge decisions than the race of the defendant. Kalief Browder spent three years in prison pre-trial for allegedly stealing a backpack! But in this case, involving serious but nonetheless nonviolent crimes, Judge Kim exercised proper restraint. The Fox 4 report notes that Judge Kim’s “decision was more lenient than with most of the other defendants on the docket that day, including youth of other ethnicities.” This is also admirable.

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But then, oof, there’s this exchange:

Mom: “This is the situation that happened when I let him go to the studio. He gets in the car with somebody else and all this happens.”

Kim: “Mom, I’ve got to ask. When you say music, do you mean rapper?”

Literal and proverbial record scratch.

As you might imagine, Judge Kim isn’t making conversation here about the defendant’s musical stylings.

Kim: “Mom, you and I are not surprised your son is rapping and gets caught in a stolen car with a gun and goes on a car chase. We can kind of predict that’s going to happen.”

Mom: “Just because he does rap music?”

Kim: “The culture, right? It shouldn’t surprise you.”

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A child ending up with a gun probably has more to do with the culture of Texas than rap. And that’s not entirely facetious — what would the chiding words be if a white high school bro got caught with a gun? Texas has a gun range for kids! Maybe take some responsibility for that before trying to throw rappers under the bus here.

Mom got it exactly right with the “just because.” We don’t leap to “Country singer… I guess we’re not surprised about this drunk driving charge” or “Broadway… I guess we’re not surprised about being an obnoxious public nuisance” either. There’s no excuse to bring his musical tastes into this at all. There’s more than enough in the record already. If the judge wanted to make a point about the importance of not living out the songs that one writes — a Hank Williams Jr. point, to be fair — then he could do it without singling out a genre with close ties to Black people and trying to peg it with a “culture” problem.

Because when you say stuff, like Judge Kim did when asked about this by local news, “I think everyone recognizes the difference between rap and rap culture,” it sounds an awful lot like the latter is being used as a handy euphemism for something a whole lot worse.

Since Judge Kim got a lot of this matter right, here’s hoping he has the wisdom not to double down on this egregious act of stereotyping and use the uproar this will cause as a learning opportunity.

Tarrant County judge accused of stereotyping aspiring teen rapper during court hearing [Fox 4]


HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.