Much has already been written about what seems to be the ridiculously light sentencing of Brock Turner, and the disparity between his sentencing and the sentencing of Cory Batey earlier this year (Cory Batey, and African American, was a 19-year-old standout football player at Vanderbilt when he raped an unconscious woman. He was recently sentenced to a minimum of 15 to 25 years in prison.)
It’s an outrage and I have nothing to add to the conversation.
What I would like to talk about though, is the psychology behind the disparity and what it teaches us.
I don’t believe that this was a case of deliberate racism; “Batey is an African American, let’s throw him in jail for as long as we can”, but rather, it was the result of a more subconscious, subtler, and therefore more dangerous, form of prejudice.
Once found guilty, Batey was seen as a rapist while Turner was seen as a student that raped. There’s a world of a difference between the two.
The Talmud states “A person does not sin unless a spirit of folly enters his mind”. This statement underscores the Jewish belief that we are not “born in sin” but rather are inherently pure and good. Our sins are aberrations that need to be explained. In other words evil is not who we are but what we do.
While this doesn’t in anyway justify the light sentence, I believe that this is how the judge viewed Turner. With his comment “a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him" the judge disclosed that he saw Turner not as a terrible Human-Being but rather a Human-Being who did a terrible thing.
Batey, on the other hand was given no such consideration. He was seen as a terrible Human-Being, a rapist, underserving of any concern as to whether “a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him”. A terrible Human-Beings’ life has no value or concern to us.
I’m not a sentencing expert and I have no clue as to what the appropriate sentence in a case like Baley or Turner should be, but one thing is for sure, there should be equality and compassion in our justice system.
There’s an important lesson here in how we ought to view the people around us. While Turners sentence is far too lenient, he is not a rapist but a student that raped. And so is Batey.
The Torah instructs us to “Love your fellow as you love yourself”. We all have flaws, we all mess up, but we see our flaws and mistakes in their proper context. We don’t allow them to define us. We are inherently good people, the negatives are aberrations that we still need to work on. They don’t diminish our inherent value.
Often, though we don’t afford that same luxury to the people around us. We catch them lying or being nasty and immediately write them off for life. Therefore the Torah says “Love others as yourself” just like you see your flaws against the backdrop of your inherent goodness see others the same way.
There was once a professor that who once complained to the Rebbe about the nature of people.
“From my encounters, I have noticed that people can seem nice and charming at the outset. They may express concern for you, show interest in your life, and even openly admit that they love you! But if one digs just a little deeper than the outer surface—some require more digging than others—at their core everyone is exactly the same: selfish, arrogant and egotistic. When you get to really know them you realize they aren’t so good after all! Why is this the nature of mankind?”
The Rebbe responded with a parable:
“When one walks on the street, things often look so elegant and appealing: tall flowery trees, fancy houses, paved roads and expensive cars. But if one takes a hoe and begins digging beneath the surface, he discovers dirt and mud, nothing like the beautiful but ‘deceptive’ world above ground.”
At this point the professor was nodding his head in agreement, not fully realizing where this was going.
“But if he weren’t to give up,” the Rebbe concluded, “and would continue digging deeper, he would eventually encounter precious minerals and diamonds.”
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Benjy Silverman
P.S. See you on Sunday 11 am for the Ten Commandments and Cheesecake/Ice Cream celebration.
