A county judge in Hagerstown, Maryland was reprimanded for calling three African American female lawyers “the Supremes” in open court and for advising their defendant to get an “experienced male attorney.” The judge has since acknowledged that his comments suggested racial and sexual bias, but said that he was trying to protect the three public defenders from representing a difficult defendant.

How? By publicly humiliating them?

What surprises me with this incident is not so much what the judge said, but how he justified it. It seems that since Don Imus successfully defended his blatantly racist “nappy headed hoes” comment that he used to describe the Rutgers University women’s basketball team that everyone who uses racially insensitive remarks has a “good” excuse for it.

The problem that we have with workplace diversity and inclusion is mirrored clearly in this unfortunate incident. Here we have a judge, someone in a position of authority, someone people would assume to be an equitable person by virtue of his office, and someone people would assume to be wise in choosing his remarks when speaking with his subordinates and fellow attorneys. Yet his honor felt it to be his duty to protect these three female Black lawyers from this “difficult” defendant by publicly disparaging them.

In my humble opinion, people who unwittingly use racially disparaging remarks in any public forum do so because they are accustomed to using these remarks frequently in private. Their “slip of the tongue” is just a reflection of how they speak and act when they are out of the public eye.

For example, in 1995 US Representative Dick Armey of Texas claimed that his referring to fellow (and openly gay) US Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts as "Barney Fag" in a press interview was a slip of the tongue. Frank responded to this comment by saying that in the 59 years that his mother had been married to his father, "no one had ever called her Elsie Fag." I think that once the distinguished gentleman from Texas was in private, he probably referred to his colleague from Massachusetts only as “Barney Fag” frequently.

And my opinion on this particular issue is backed up by actual events, because in 2000, when Armey was asked by columnist Dave Barry "Are you really Dick Armey?" he replied, "Yes, I am Dick Armey. And if there is a dick army, Barney Frank would want to join up." These days, Dick Armey is no longer a congressman, but Barney Frank continues to be reelected by his constituency. Go figure.

My point is that most people when asked in public will tell you that they are all for diversity in every aspect of life, but when they get together in their tightest cliques, they’ll call their colleagues “fags” and “spics.” These two incidences I mentioned in this post demonstrate that even in some of the highest positions in our society, we still have way too many “important” people who apparently are closet sexists, racists, and homophobes.

The Maryland judge apologized to the three Black lawyers since the incident and had offered to recuse himself from other cases the three attorneys handled, but each of the three women has appeared in his court since the incident.

I have a serious problem with the notion that for some reason we believe that an apology is the moral equivalent of a panacea. In this case, (unlike the Imus case, where despite his apology and attempts to make things right with the Black community he was still fired), the Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities concluded the comments the judge made during the court hearing were "undignified and disparaging." Duh.

But this judge didn’t get so much as a slap on the hand. No unpaid administrative leave, no demotion— no accountability for his actions. Where there is no accountability, there is no learning, and there is no progress. Chances are this judge will have another slip of the tongue soon, whether in public or private.

In order for any effort aimed at increasing the acceptance of diversity in the workplace to succeed, everyone at the top needs to demonstrate their commitment to diversity in public, but especially in private. And when they screw up, they must be held accountable and receive a just punishment for their actions.