“White Knight” Syndrome Leads Judge to Unfair (“Racist”) Verdict

Former Judge Frank Barbaro

An 86 year-old retired (white) judge, a self-proclaimed “lifelong Civil Rights activist,” former Longshoreman and NY State Assemblyman now admits that he wrongly convicted a white man, Donald Kagan, for killing a black man, Wavell Wint, Jr. who was in the process of mugging him over a chain that Kagan was wearing outside a movie theater in East New York Brooklyn in 1998.

Sadly, Frank Barbaro’s confession comes about 14 years too late for Donald Kagan, whom he convicted in 1999 and at the twilight of his own life, a life lived under the happy delusion of “effective do-gooderism.”

Unfortunately, Barbaro’s is NOT a rare disorder. Many white liberals have long suffered under the “White Knight” syndrome, in which they come to believe that THEY are rare bastions of “goodness” among a society filled with (mostly white) racial bigots and other assorted “badies.”

No doubt, it must feel pretty GOOD. That’s why so many of today’s Leftists seem stuck in the 1960s, erroneously believing that white America overwhelmingly reviles blacks and that blacks, in turn, need the paternalism proffered by these “White Knights.”

The fact that overt anti-black bigotry is exceedingly rare makes no difference to the “White Knights,” who look instead at the “disparate impacts” that things like standardized exams and traditional lending criteria have on African-Americans and compare whites who demand “ONE standard for ALL,” in opposition to race-based preferences as “racists,” instead of the moral (and Constitutional) crusaders they truly are.

What else, except the “White Knight” syndrome, could lead a judge to convict a man defending himself from attack (a mugging) of murder, for merely righteously defending himself?

Not surprisingly, Wint’s family, in true “ghetto fabulous” fashion, see THEMSELVES as the victims; “I shouldn’t be back here reliving the past. I thought everything was over with,” said Wavell Wint Jr., who was 4 when Kagan killed his dad.

“He should be ashamed of himself as a judge,” said Wint Jr.’s mom, Carmen De Jesus.

For those concerned over the prospects of Donald Kagan’s wrongful conviction being overturned, NOT to worry, his case is now in the hands of Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice ShawnDya Simpson, a Judge and self-confessed “fashionista,” who is fond of wearing lime green suits under her judicial robes. It appears likely that poor Donald Kagan’s fate is effectively sealed.