Dershowitz: Being Black Doesn't Give You a License to Call People Racist

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) called Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz's comments "absolutely racist" this week.

Dershowitz was being interviewed by Fox News and was giving analysis on which regions would be most favorable to the Trump side in a possible future trial (in terms of juries) when he noted that between a couple of options, "[Washington] has an ethnic and racial composition that would be somewhat less favorable to Donald Trump."

But Waters characterized Dershowitz comments as saying:

"What he's simply saying [is that] all of those black people are there and they don't like Trump, so he's not going to get a fair trial. And so they should take it out of that jurisdiction. It shouldn't be there to begin with. I don't like that. And I'm surprised that Alan Dershowitz is talking like that. And we will not stand for it. We will push back against that. Because that is absolutely racist."

Dershowitz replied later to Fox that Waters "should know better and does know better ... If I had said that race didn't matter, she would have called me a racist. She throws the term around so loosely and so inappropriately, and it weakens her credibility, because by calling everybody a racist, by calling me a racist, when she calls real racists racist nobody is going to believe her. Would she have called Johnny Cochran racist? ... Being black doesn't give you a licence to call people racist any more than being Jewish gives you a licence to call people anti-Semitic."

After False Report of Hate Crime, 3 Women Get Probation

On a city bus last year, three black women started a fight with some white men. According to police who later reviewed video and audio footage and talked to witnesses, the women were the aggressors, none of the white men ever struck the women, the women started attacking the white men, and continued attacking despite efforts of several passengers to stop them. The only racial slur uttered was by one of the black women.

The women called 911 and reported the men for a hate crime. On the recording of the call, a woman can be heard uttering (while waiting to be connected): “I think it’s so funny … I just think it’s so funny how, like … I beat up a boy!”

After the women reported the "hate crime" of race-based assault by a large group of white men, hundreds of people turned out for a rally in support of them, and Hillary Clinton tweeted about the incident, sharing a link to a news story about the protest against the "attack on three black women."

One of the three women made a plea deal for community service. Two others were sentenced to 3 years probation, 200 hours of community service, and a $1,000 fine. They were also suspended from university. They were not charged with assault.