Daniel Holtzclaw has been found guilty and is going to be in jail for a long, long time. He wept when the verdict was announced because, as a coward and a bully, his crimes have finally caught up with him.

He was a bad cop who used his authority to prey on women who had no recourse to justice.

By allegedly focusing on poor black women with criminal records, Holtzclaw kept himself from being caught—until he met J.L., a black woman who was just passing through the neighborhood he patrolled. “Not only is this individual stopping women who fit a profile of members of our society who are confronted rightly or wrongly by police officers all the time,” said the [Oklahoma County] prosecutor, [Gayland] Gieger. “He identifies a vulnerable society that without exception except one have an attitude for ‘What good is it gonna do? He’s a police officer. Who’s going to believe me?’”

Are there any good cops left? And what is wrong with our society? It’s sick that we have a whole segment, entire neighborhoods, where we assume that the poor residents are so deserving of mistreatment that we police them with predators who feel contempt and hatred for the people they are supposed to protect and serve.

And this disgusts me.

During the trial, defense attorneys tried to challenge the victims’ credibility by emphasizing their criminal records to the jury and asking about their past drug use. Holtzclaw’s family also accused the victims of fabricating their stories.

So if the police harass and abuse a neighborhood for years, that becomes an argument that the police can’t be harassing and abusing the people there because they’re all criminals? There’s a cycle of state-sanctioned toxicity that has to be stopped.

But for now, it’s good to see Holtzclaw shaking and sobbing. I think of all the girls and women who were shaking and sobbing and despairing of justice after he attacked them, and see maybe a tiny bit of justice trickling back.

The court is hearing the absurd case of Abigail Fisher, a white student who claims she was denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin because of affirmative action. It’s a case that should have been dismissed for pure patent ridiculousness, but now we know why it’s been allowed before the highest court in the land: because Antonin Scalia is a fucking racist. He wants to argue that maybe black students are just a little slower and less intelligent than the white students. Send them to lesser schools, instead.

There are those who contend that it does not benefit African­-Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less ­advanced school, a less ­­ a slower­ track school where they do well. One of, ­one of the briefs pointed out that most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas… They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them…I’m just not impressed by the fact that the University of Texas may have too fewer. Maybe it ought to have too fewer. And maybe some, you know, when you take more, the number of blacks, really competent blacks admitted to lesser schools, turns out to be less. I don’t think it stands to reason that it’s a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible.

The American Supreme Court, ladies and gentlemen.

It’s ugly, and I blame the Republicans, especially the Tea Party and Trump fans, the latest incarnation of our nativist know-nothings. The Minneapolis Star Tribune has run a personal account of an encounter with one of those assholes.

It was my first Minnesota Vikings game and my first NFL game. I am not new to football, though. As an undergrad at Boston College, I went to many Eagles games, and I played junior varsity football. I knew what to expect on the field. I was excited, and, as I found my seat, I thought about bringing my family to a game in the new stadium.

What I didn’t expect was for a man to push aside other people and point his finger in my face, demanding to know if I was a refugee. He needed to make sure I wasn’t a refugee, he said. There was anger in his face and vehemence in his accusation.

I was stunned. He didn’t know anything about me. We were complete strangers. But somewhere in his mind, all he saw was a terrorist, based on nothing more than the color of my skin. He was white, and I wasn’t. He didn’t see anything else.

He didn’t know that I have lived in Minnesota for the past four years, that I was born and raised in New York and that the words “Never Forget” may mean more to me than to him. He didn’t know that when I went home and my children jumped on top of me and asked “How was the game?” that I’d be holding back tears as I told them about racism instead of touchdowns. He didn’t know that I am an attorney and the director of the Refugee and Immigrant Program at the Advocates for Human Rights.

Let’s not whitewash this any more. I used to think islamophobia was a silly concept, that thinking Islam was a wretched, stupid belief was entirely rational. But what I’m seeing over and over is that rejection of a false belief is largely a pretense for many of these people, and really they’re just looking for an excuse to rage against people of Middle Eastern descent.

But here’s an antidote: a British soldier who lost a leg in Iraq writes about Muslim people as complicated human beings. We need to prioritize those voices over those of resentful bigots at football games and Trump rallies.