Black Judges Represented on TV as Loud, Crass Jerks

This is the 21st in a series of “55-Plus” columns on courtroom reality shows. To read the previous column on the subject, click here.

“He looks like a judge.”

That was said of Lewis Stone, who portrayed Judge James K. Hardy from 1938 to 1946 in the Andy Hardy movie series.

It was said, also, of Voltaire Perkins, the lawyer/actor who played the judge on the original, black-and-white version of television’s “Divorce Court,” which started in 1958.

What did it mean to “look like a judge” in those days?

It meant being a well-bred, gray-haired, male WASP. (“WASP” is an acronym, now out of vogue and probably unknown to the younger generation, standing for “white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.”)

Joseph A. Wapner, a retired Los Angeles Superior Court judge, went on the air in 1981 as the judge on “The People’s Court,” and was said to “look like a judge,” evidencing that stereotypes had become less rigid. Wapner is a well-bred, gray-haired, white male who is Jewish.

Judges nowadays come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, of both genders, of many religious persuasions. That’s as it should be. In Lewis Stone’s day, no one would say that Joyce Kennard “looks like a judge,” but she is a judge, and as I (and many others) see it, the outstanding member of our state’s Supreme Court.

And so, with blacks portraying four out of the seven “judges” on television today, it would seem, at first blush, that, in the words of the cigarette spiel, we’ve “come a long way, baby,” that there has been social progress.

Unfortunately, three of those four black TV judges are loud buffoons.

While it cannot be imagined that the producers of the respective syndicated shows conspired to portray black judges as boors, that’s the depiction you’ll find if you tune in the current version of “Divorce Court” or “Judge Joe Brown” or “Judge Mathis.”

While there is no longer a stereotypical concept of what a judge “looks like,” there is a common notion as to what it means to act “like a judge.” These three pretend judges do not act in the manner expected of judges.

Indeed, it’s a sure bet that any of the three TV judges, if a member of a California trial court, would be yanked off the bench by the Commission on Judicial Performance.

Sadly, the “reality” format of the shows is apt to create the conception that the events shown are faithful simulations, if not actual court proceedings. “Real cases, real people,” the announcer intones on “Judge Mathis.” His counterpart on “Divorce Court” describes the venue as one “where real couples deal with real people.”

The conduct is demeaning to the image of the real judiciary — as is the offensive behavior of white stars of TV courtroom shows, such as “Judge Judy.” But when you have three blacks playing judges, each doing so without a trace of regard for judicial responsibility, it cannot do other than to spawn a false and damaging stereotypical notion as to how black judges conduct themselves.

Mablean Ephriam is a Los Angeles attorney. She enjoys the respect and affection of colleagues. If she were cast in the role of an actual judge, perhaps she would perform admirably. But on “Divorce Court,” playacting a judge, she is insufferable, persistently out of line.

She shrieks at the parties. She interjects snide, often sexually oriented one-liners. She chooses up sides early, and bears down on the party who will lose. She allows the parties to bicker and shout at each other. She makes faces. Under California’s Canons of Judicial Ethics and like strictures elsewhere, this is highly improper conduct.

On a recent show, an Anglo male, married to a Hispanic woman, noted that he was referred to by her family as a “cracker” (a poor white southerner). Ephriam quipped: “Don’t y’all know that crackers and beans go together?”

In one case, an ex-wife claimed her former spouse forced her to gain weight. “Judge” Ephriam sided with the woman.

“You were a cheater and a liar,” she shouted at the former husband at one point. At another point, she used the line: “This is cockamamie bull and it’s just an excuse for him to go play around.”

The ex-wife mentioned that her erstwhile spouse had extramaritally fathered two children; the man acknowledged this. “Two babies,” Ephriam recited, proceeding to bellow at the man: “In case you didn’t know.”

She said this of the male litigant:

“If I seen him lying in bed with a woman right now, he’d be denying that I was seeing what I saw.”

In another case that day, a woman suspected her former husband, a mechanic, of having had an extramarital relationship with a customer. Ephriam quipped, loudly (as always): “There’s all kinds of spark plugs and all kinds of tune-ups, you know.”

In a third case, she used these lines: “You’d better pick up your foot because you’re stepping in something” and “You must think I’m a ding-dang fool and just stepped off a turnip truck.”

I viewed part of another installment. The ex-husband was accused of having had extramarital sex with more than 2,000 women over a 16-year period. Ephriam defined his “type” of woman as all persons “as long as they had a hole.”

The litigant said, “I always used a condom,” to which Ephriam responded: “Not for oral sex.”

This courtroom sideshow somehow attracts ratings. But as an attorney, Ephriam surely knows that judges may not conduct themselves in the free-wheeling, smart-alec manner that marks her imitation of judicial performance, and that the series, though providing lucre to her, fosters gross misconceptions on the part of viewers as to what goes on in a courtroom. Her participation in the program is lamentable.

“Judge Joe Brown” stars a UCLA Law School graduate who grew up in South Central Los Angeles and became a Tennessee judge. “Judge Mathis” is Greg Mathis, formerly a judge in Detroit. Both bellow at the parties and sling insults.

On a show recently, a black girl uttered complaints about her situation at home. Mathis pantomimed the playing of a violin, then told her:

“Sweetie, your ghetto story ain’t better than anybody else’s.”

Brown asked a man his occupation. The response was “handyman.” Brown remarked: “In other words, you ain’t got no job.”

While Brown can be abusive, he’s not one to keep order in the court. During one session, four people — the plaintiff and a witness at one counsel table, the defendant and a witness at the other — all were hollering at each other while Brown, having gotten off the bench, sat on a railing, with folded arms, enjoying the fray.

That’s just not how judges conduct themselves. These shows are burlesque versions of courtroom proceedings, feigning accuracy.

The fourth black judge, Glenda Hatchett, formerly a member of the bench in Georgia and now the star of “Judge Hatchett,” conducts herself in an appropriate manner. That distinguishes her from the other TV judges (now that the Animal Planet is no longer carrying reruns of “Judge Wapner’s Animal Court”). Her show, however, is contrived and hokey.

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Next week: More about the current courtroom shows.

The "55-Plus" column is written especially for those over the age of 55, by a veteran California journalist who is himself eligible for the club. Roger M. Grace has written and edited newspapers for more than four decades, and has been a lawyer for more than three.

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