Tim Wise's Blog, page 16

Tim Wise on MSNBC’s NOW, 8/23/13 – Race, Crime and So-Called “Double Standards” of Outrage

My appearance on MSNBC’s NOW With Alex Wagner (Joy-Ann Reid hosting), to discuss the right-wing freakout over the so-called “racial double standard” in crime reporting between the shooting of Trayvon Martin and Australian baseball player Chris Lane.

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Race, Crime and Statistical Malpractice: How the Right Manipulates White Fear With Bogus Data

As soon as news began to spread about the horrific and utterly senseless murder of an Australian-born baseball player in Oklahoma at the hands of three young black males (or at least, that’s how they were first described in the media), I knew what would be coming; specifically, into my e-mail inbox and all around the internet. And even though one of the three implicated in the killing is actually white, and so the supposed racial angle of the crime is incredibly convoluted, if indeed race had anything to do with it at all, I had no illusions that this would somehow change the reaction from certain quarters. Whenever something like this happens, white supremacist groups make sure to blanket the web with vitriol in which they seek to remind white folks how endangered we are at the hands of black people. Knowing that many whites are anxious about the changing demographics of the nation — which portend that around 2043 we will no longer be the absolute majority of persons in the U.S — playing upon fears of criminal victimization by people of color is seen as a great way to win new recruits to the white nationalist cause.

And sure enough, it didn’t take long. As soon as I turned on my computer yesterday morning, there it was: an e-mail from an angry and rather blatantly racist white male, spouting all the same nonsense as I’ve come to expect in moments like this. More savvy than most though, he made sure not to rely on data and arguments from neo-Nazis, but rather from well-known black conservative Walter Williams, who just about a week ago penned a column in which he parroted the line of the white racists, inveighing against the supposed epidemic of black-on-white crime. For Williams, it wasn’t the first time he had done this. Several years back, and taking his cues and information straight from the work of white supremacist and separatist Jared Taylor, he had made the same arguments.

As Williams noted, and as many a white nationalist has over the years, 83 percent of the time when violent crime is interracial, the perp is black and the victim is white. So although most criminal violence may be intra-racial (that is to say, black-on-black and white-on-white), when the offender and victim differ racially, it is typically the case that someone black is doing the crime and someone white is suffering the consequences. As the sender of yesterday morning’s e-mail put it, what do I have to say about that?

The answer, of course, is quite a bit, actually. Williams’s claim — which he makes upon the basis of Justice Department data from the National Crime Victimization Survey — suggests an incredible imbalance, almost as if blacks were deliberately targeting white people in a veritable orgy of hate! And yet, upon closer inspection the number isn’t nearly as meaningful as Williams, or the white supremacists who first began circulating it many years ago, take it to be.

Let’s look at the data, so as to better understand the logical fallacy in Williams’s position.

So Just How Dangerous Are Black Folks? The Trouble With Right-Wing Data Analysis

First, according to the 2008 data Williams relied on (see Table 42), which is the most recent comprehensive data published by the Justice Department on violent crime victimizations, that year there were approximately 3.6 million violent crimes involving a single-offender. These crimes include assault, both simple and aggravated (mostly simple), robbery, and sexual assault or rape. Of those 3.6 million violent crimes, whites committed 2.1 million of them (58.4%) while blacks committed about 830,000 (22.8%) About 442,000 (or 12%) involved perpetrators whose race was not known to the victim. Thus, for crimes where the race of the perpetrator was known to the victims (about 3.2 million crimes), whites would have committed about 67 percent, and blacks about 26 percent. If we assume the same rough racial distribution for crimes where the perpetrator’s race was not known as for crimes where the offender race was known (a reasonable guess), this would mean that whites committed an additional 300,000 crimes, roughly, while blacks would have committed an additional 115,000. In all, this would mean that in 2008, whites committed roughly 2.4 million single offender violent crimes, while blacks would have committed around 950,000.

Since there were roughly 31 million African Americans, age 12 and over — and thus eligible for consideration in crime data — in 2008 (this is noted in the same DOJ tables Williams and I are both referencing here), at most, this would mean that for every 1000 blacks in the population there were 30 criminal offenders, and thus, at most, 3 percent of blacks committed a violent crime in 2008 (meaning, importantly, that at least 97 percent did not). And since there were approximately 205 million whites, 12 and over, in the population that year, this would mean that for every 1000 whites in the population there were 12 criminal offenders, and thus, at most, about 1.2 percent of whites committed a violent crime in 2008.*

Of course, in truth, and for both groups, the numbers are quite a bit smaller than this. After all, the 30 offenders per 1000 persons (the 3 percent rate of offending for blacks) are not 30 different people. In other words, to say that 3 percent of blacks commit a violent crime each year would assume that each offender committed only one crime, such that the number of offenses equalled the number of offenders, but that isn’t the case. There are, as we all know, many offenders who commit multiple offenses each year. As such, the number of offenders would be quite a bit smaller than the number of offenses. Criminologists have estimated, for instance, that 70 percent of criminal offenses are committed by just 7 percent of the total offenders, meaning that there is a small hardcore group of seriously predatory criminals out there doing most of the crime. This would mean that 93 percent of all offenders commit just 30 percent of the crimes. So this would mean that of the 950,000 violent crimes committed by blacks in 2008, 70 percent of them (or 665,000) would have been committed by just 7 percent of all black offenders, while 285,000, roughly, would have been committed by the other 93 percent of offenders. If we assume that the 93 percent who weren’t the major repeat offenders only committed one crime each (likely a conservative estimate, but one which errs on the side of the right-wing argument by maximizing the potential numbers of black offenders), this would mean that, at most, the 285,000 offenses actually equate to 93 percent of the offenders. If 285,000 represents 93 percent of all black offenders, then the remaining 7 percent of offenders above that number would come to only an additional 20,000 or so offenders — major hardcore criminals who commit about 665,000 crimes each year. This would mean that at most there might be a little more than 300,000 individual black violent offenders each year. As a percentage of the 12 and over black population in 2008, this would represent only about 1 percent of all blacks who will commit a violent crime in a given year, versus 99 percent who will not. Even if we just restricted the analysis to black males — and even if all these crimes were committed by males, which they were not — it would mean that no more than 2 percent of black males would commit a violent crime in a given year. This alone is an important point to keep in mind, as it suggests that having a generalized fear of black folks, or black men, is the height of statistical irrationality.

But…But…What About the Black-on-White Crime Data? How the Right Distorts Interracial Crime Figures

As for interracial crime data, this is where right-wing statistical stupidity just becomes downright manipulative. On the one hand, yes, according to the tables, there were indeed far more black-on-white violent crimes (B-W) than white-on-black violent crimes (W-B) in 2008: about 429,000 in the first case and only about 91,000 in the other. Meaning that out of about 520,000 single-offender interracial violent crimes that year, 82.5 percent were black-on-white (B-W) while only 17.5 percent were white-on-black (W-B). My goodness! Perhaps Williams has a point.

Well, no, not really. And for someone who is supposedly a reputable scholar, his illogic is particularly glaring. Before explaining why, let us just note at the outset that there is no reason to believe most of these attacks (either the B-W or the W-B) were racially motivated. This data does not refer to hate-related violence, or violence where there has been a discernible racial motivation (as Pat Buchanan recently claimed on Fox), and indeed, the biggest racial disproportion for violent crime, numerically — and year after year — is in the area of robbery, the motivation for which is pecuniary (financial), rather than bigotry.

But more than that, even the basic claim that B-W crime is wildly disproportionate and indicative of some kind of race-based targeting by black offenders against white victims is utter nonsense. Here’s why.

First, relative rates of interracial offending are directly influenced by an important factor, which goes ignored by Williams: namely, the relative rates of criminal offending in general for blacks as opposed to whites. In other words, if the black criminal offending rate in general is 2.5 times higher than the white offending rate, which it was in 2008 (30 per 1000 blacks/12 per 1000 whites), we should logically expect far more black-on-white crimes than white-on-black crimes, simply as a matter of random chance, and having nothing to do with racial targeting.

Imagine, for instance, a hypothetical community where there are 6.7 times more whites than blacks (as was true in the U.S. in 2008) and where black offending rates in general are 2.5 times higher than for whites. And let’s say that in our hypothetical community, there are 20,000 blacks. Multiplied by 6.7 this would give us 134,000 whites for a total population of 154,000. If, as the real world data suggests, the black violent offending rate is 30 violent crimes per 1000 black persons (or 3 percent), we would expect to see about 600 violent crimes committed by blacks in this community. And if, as the real world data suggests, the white violent offending rate is about 12 violent crimes per 1000 white persons (or 1.2 percent), we would expect about 1608 violent crimes committed by whites in this community. Given relative population sizes (and thus, availability to be victims of one another), we could expect 87 percent of the victims of black violent crime in this restricted white-black sample to be white, since 87 percent of this restricted range, black-white universe, is white; likewise, we’d expect about 13 percent of white crime victims to be black, since 13 percent of this restricted range, black-white universe, is black. This would mean that we could predict about 522 black-on-white violent crimes in a given year, as opposed to only 209 white-on-black violent crimes. In other words, just based on relative population sizes (and thus, victim availability), and general offending rate differences (and thus, perpetrator availability), we should expect 2.5 times more B-W violent crimes than the reverse. In this scenario, about 71 percent of all interracial crimes would be B-W as opposed to W-B.

Aha! Walter Williams might say: See, I was right! Random chance would only predict that 71 percent of interracial violence was black-on-white, but in truth, 83 percent of such violence was. And random chance would predict 2.5 times more B-W crime than W-B crime, but in actuality the ratio is 4.7 to 1. So there must be racial targeting!

The Importance of Differential Encounter Rates

Well, again, no. And again, for reasons that any reasonably competent social scientist should be able to discern; foremost among them, the fact that whites and blacks don’t actually encounter each other randomly throughout the population, as if we were evenly distributed throughout the communities where we live. We still tend to live in relative isolation from one another, such that whites do not actually encounter blacks at a rate commensurate with their overall share of the population, and blacks do not encounter whites at a rate commensurate with our share, either. Because of ongoing residential and spatial isolation, the rates of interracial encounter are far less, for both groups, than this. According to the best estimates we have (which are admittedly a bit dated but have not likely changed dramatically, given ongoing patterns of white/black housing isolation from one another), only about three percent of persons encountered by whites are black, on average, while about 57 percent of persons encountered by blacks are white, on average — in both cases far less than population percentages alone would predict. So now we would need to adjust for encounter rates, in order to determine the amount of interracial violent crime that should be expected given random chance and even without any racial targeting.

In our hypothetical above, the 600 black offenders would have a 57 percent chance of victimizing a white person, given encounter rates, while our 1608 white offenders would have only a 3 percent chance of victimizing a black person, also because of encounter rates. This would mean that in our hypothetical community we should expect 342 black-on-white violent crimes, compared to only 48 white-on-black violent crimes, for a ratio of 7.1 to 1 — a ratio that is 1.5 times higher than the actual real world ratio of 4.7 to 1. And in this hypothetical community, 88 percent of all interracial crimes would be black-on-white, which is actually higher than the 83 percent of such crimes in the real world.

In other words, given general offending rates which are indeed higher for blacks than whites (but which still indicate that the overwhelming majority of blacks are not violent criminal offenders), and given the likelihood of interracial encounters between whites and blacks (and which are especially rare for whites encountering blacks), the rates of black-on-white interracial crime are either pretty much exactly what would be expected without any racial targeting whatsoever, or they are even lower than random chance would predict.

Even if we assumed that a reduction in hyper-segregation had increased the likelihood of interracial encounters since the above-referenced interracial encounter rates were estimated, this would not change the fundamental argument here, or the conclusions we should draw concerning the supposed disproportionality of B-W crime. So, for instance, even if we assumed that whites were now 2/3 more likely to encounter blacks than before, due perhaps to the growth of the black middle class, and thus, more blacks moving into previously white spaces (which is likely a very high estimate), this would mean that still, only about 5 percent of those encountered by whites would be black. And, since blacks moving to white areas as they move into the middle class would also result in a dramatic increase in the percentage of whites encountered by those blacks, this would mean that not only the 3 percent W-B encounter rate but also the 57 percent B-W encounter rate would grow. Let’s say that it only grew by 10 percent, such that blacks today were only 10 percent more likely than before to encounter whites, which would likely be a conservative estimate. This would mean that rather than 57 percent, now about 63 percent of persons encountered by blacks would be white. Although the encounter rate differences would have shrunk to be sure — from a 19:1 ratio down to a 12.6 to 1 ratio, the resulting statistical logic would remain operative. Under this scenario, in our hypothetical community, we would expect the 600 black offenders to have a 63 percent chance of victimizing a white person, while our white offenders would have a 5 percent chance of victimizing a black person. Thus, we could expect 378 B-W violent crimes, compared to 80 W-B crimes, for a ratio of 4.7 to 1, which is exactly the ratio of B-W to W-B crime in the real world for 2008. And in this hypothetical, 82.5 percent of all interracial crime would be B-W crime, which, once again, exactly mirrors the real-world data referenced by Williams. In other words, and without any racial targeting whatsoever, the interracial crime data about which Williams and various others on the right make such a big deal, would look exactly as it actually looks. Simply put, when it comes to the idea that blacks are targeting whites as some kind of race-based pattern, there is no there, there.

Some additional things are also worth noting. First, in 2008, according to the very same table Williams uses for his claim, black and white victims of violent crime were equally likely to have been interracially victimized by members of the other race group. In other words, from the victim perspective, the odds of interracial victimization are the same. From the offender perspective, the odds of black-on-white victimization are greater, but this is entirely a function of population demographics, encounter rates and general offending rates. Once these are controlled for, there is simply no truth to the suggestion that black criminals are targeting whites as victims.

And there is one more thing. When we compare interracial offending rates to Census data in 2008 for persons 12 and over (which is also provided in the DOJ report), we discover that at most, 1.4 percent of blacks, 12 and over, criminally victimized a white person that year, and this is assuming that each of the 429,000 B-W violent crimes were committed by unique perpetrators, which is unlikely. If we assume the 70/7 rule as noted above — which left us with about 300,000 individual black offenders rather than 950,000 in 2008 (or only about 1 percent of the 12 and over black population, as opposed to 3 percent before the 70/7 adjustment) — and even if we assumed that three-fourths of black offenders would victimize a white person in a given year (a ridiculously high estimate), this would mean perhaps 225,000 blacks who in a given year would victimize a white person. As such, this would mean that the percentage of the black population victimizing whites in a given year would be no more than 0.7 percent of the black population 12 and over.

But even this estimate is high, since 92 percent of all Hispanics are included in the white category (of both crime victims and perps) in DOJ data, and so Hispanics victimized by blacks will appear as “white victims” (see note below). Since Latinos are more likely to live near blacks than non-Hispanic whites are, given economic stratification and levels of urbanicity for Hispanics and blacks as opposed to “real whites,” we can safely assume that a significant number of white victims in the data are actually persons of color (Latino and Latina). But even if we assumed that all of the B-W violent crimes were committed against non-Hispanic whites (who numbered about 173 million people age 12 and over that year) this would mean that at most, perhaps 0.25 percent (2.5 tenths of one percent) of all whites were violently victimized by blacks that year.

Interracial Homicide Data: or How to Totally Destroy a Right-Wing Meme

As for homicide — obviously the most serious of all violent crimes — the supposed interracial imbalance, and the supposed B-W disproportionality is even less impressive. According to FBI data (which is where the racial perp/victim data is tallied for homicide, as opposed to the NCVS tables considered by Williams above), for those crimes where the race of the perp and victim are known, in 2010, there were 447 B-W murders and 218 W-B murders: in neither case a particularly substantial number. Indeed, whites were 6.2 times more likely to be murdered by another white person than by a black person and blacks were about 11 times more likely to be murdered by another black person than by a white person. Although both of these numbers (the 447 and 218) are no doubt lower than the true numbers that year for both directions of interracial homicide (since they only represent murders where the race of the perp is known, and for many homicides that information is not clear), relative ratios would not change much even if that information were available for all homicides. As such we can use these numbers to determine whether the rates of B-W homicide are truly so high, relative to W-B homicide as to suggest some kind of racial targeting of whites by blacks. The key in making this determination is similar to the one employed above for all violent crime: namely, the relative homicide offending rates, generally, for blacks versus whites, since this will directly effect the predicted rates of interracial homicides in each direction.

In 2010, of homicides where the race of the offender was known (10,870) blacks committed 53 percent of all homicides (or a total of 5770), while whites committed 48 percent (or 4849). If we extrapolate those percentages to the crimes where the race of the offender was not known, this would mean that of the 4224 homicides with a “race unknown” offender, 2239 would have been committed by blacks, while 2028 would have been committed by whites. In all, this means that in 2010, blacks committed 8009 homicides, while whites committed 6877 homicides. As a percentage of the black population, in 2010, 8009 homicides represent 0.02 percent (2/100ths of 1 percent) of all blacks that year (roughly 39 million) who will kill someone. As a percentage of the white population in 2010 (223.5 million), 6877 homicides would represent 0.003 (3/1000ths of 1 percent) of all whites that year who killed someone. This means that blacks commit homicide, generally, at a rate that is 6.7 times greater than the rate for whites. Now, what does this mean for estimated rates and numbers of B-W homicide as opposed to its W-B counterpart? Let’s see.

Even if we assumed a random and perfectly mixed white and black population — such that whites and blacks encountered each other at rates relative to their population percentages — the much higher black homicide offending rates alone would predict that there should be 6.7 times more B-W murders than W-B murders. But in fact, as we saw, there were only about twice as many B-W murders as W-B murders. And when we consider the above-mentioned data on relative rates of interracial encounter, the numbers are even more striking. Even if we assume that 5 percent of all persons encountered by whites are black (an increase of 2/3 from prior and clearly documented data), and that only 63 percent of persons encountered by blacks are white (an increase of only 10 percent in the same period), we would expect 12 times more B-W homicides than W-B homicides in a given year. In a community of 3 million people, for instance, in which whites outnumbered blacks 6.7 to 1 (as is the case in the real world) there would be roughly 2,610,000 whites and 390,000 blacks. If 0.02 percent of blacks committed a murder, this would mean that we could expect 78 black homicides that year, and 63 percent of these (or 49 homicides in all) would involve white victims. If 0.003 percent of whites committed a murder that year, this would predict a similar number, roughly 78 murders committed by whites, of which only 4 would involve black victims. In other words, given relative rates of homicide offending along with relative rates of interracial encounter, we could expect 12.25 times more B-W homicides than W-B homicides in any given year. But in fact, in 2010, B-W homicide was only twice as numerically prevalent as the opposite. In other words, B-W homicide is roughly 1/6 as common as random chance would predict.

And given the relative population percentages of whites and blacks, blacks are actually more likely to be interracially murdered by a white person than vice-versa. After all, as for homicides where the race of the offender is known, 447 B-W murders as a share of the white community is 2/10,000ths of 1 percent (0.0002) of all whites killed by blacks; meanwhile, 218 W-B homicides as a share of the black community is 5.5/10,000ths of 1 percent (0.00055). So although interracial homicide is incredibly rare in either direction, any given black person is more than 2.5 times as likely as any given white person to be interracially murdered.

How anyone could fully examine this data carefully, either for violent crime generally or for homicide in particular, and conclude that there was a black-on-white crime spree underway is beyond the scope of the rational mind to comprehend. But apparently such claims are the stuff of professional scholarship to the likes of Walter Williams, which says a lot about the pathetically low quality of scholarship demanded of right-wing economists, or your garden-variety white nationalist on the internet. That such claims are taken seriously attests to the propaganda value of racist argumentation, and suggests how much work we still have to do to derail this counterfactual narrative before it does even more damage to race relations in America.

________

*It is true, of course, that some of the “white” offenders — and victims, it should be noted — in DOJ data are actually persons of color, namely Hispanics. Although Hispanic victims are treated separate from white victims in FBI Hate Crime data, they are not broken out of the DOJ data discussed here. Because Hispanics are an ethnic group rather than race, they are assigned to the various primary racial groups in almost all government data, and not broken out separately in any given data table, unless noted as such (as with the hate crime data collected by the FBI). In the case of crime data from the DOJ, about 92 percent of Hispanics are classified, racially, as white. You can verify that Hispanics are rolled in with whites and blacks (mostly whites) as victims of violent crime, by adding the numbers of victimizations of those labeled white (in Table 5 of the 2008 data), those labeled black (also Table 5), those labeled “other,” which means Asians and Native Americans, principally (also Table 5), those who are listed as being of “mixed race” or more than one race (Table 5) and then those who are Hispanic (in Table 7). The sum of these figures will amount to more (5.42 million) than the total number of violent crime victims listed in table 5, (4.856 million) indicating that Hispanics are, in effect, already being counted in the existing racial totals. As indicated in other government data collections, about 92 percent of Hispanics are classified as white, which is likely to obtain in regard to crime data as well. This means that of the Hispanic victims tallied in Table 7, about 92 percent of them would also be found in the white column of victims in Table 5, thereby artificially inflating the number of “real white” victims.

As for offenders, although white supremacists have long argued that Hispanics commit violent crime at a disproportionate rate — somewhere between whites and blacks — the most comprehensive analyses of Hispanic crime suggest this claim is utterly false. Recent analyses done by a prominent far-right conservative and even, in one case, a source long revered by white nationalists, suggest that Hispanic violent crime rates are essentially no different from those of non-Hispanic whites. As such, the 1.2 percent rate, per capita, of criminal offending for whites (including Hispanics), would apply to both Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic whites. This means that with Hispanics representing 34.5 million persons age 12 and over in 2008, and 92 percent of these being classified as white, racially, there would have been 31.7 million Hispanic whites that year. If they offend at a rate comparable to non-Hispanic whites (12 per 1000 persons, or 1.2 percent), this would translate to 380,954 violent crimes by Hispanic whites in 2008, most of which would come from the existing white totals, but many of which would also have been located in the “don’t know/not available” category, as with certain white and black crimes (noted above).

In all, because Hispanic victimization rates (Table 7) are similar to the overall white victimization rates (seen in Table 5), and because the recent research suggests Hispanic offending rates are also comparable to non-Hispanic white rates (when it comes to violent crime), doing a full methodological extraction of Hispanics from the white totals (both for victims and perps) would result in roughly proportional reductions in the white column for both. The effect on interracial crime figures would be that, a) the numbers of W-B violent crimes would drop (since some of those whites would have been Latino), and b) the number of B-W crimes would also drop (since some of those whites would also have been Latino). If anything, we would expect the effect on white “victims” of interracial crime to be larger than the effect on white perps. Since the black offending rate is disproportionate (roughly 2.5 times the white offending rate), it would stand to reason that there would be more blacks offending against Latinos, proportionately, than the opposite, and for the same reasons as discussed above, in terms of the effects of encounter rates and general offending rates. So while there would be fewer “real” white-on-black crimes too, the reduction in the number of “real” white victims would likely be greater, thereby further reducing the actual interracial crime gap between B-W and W-B crime. In other words, if the data were truly available (and they are not) to estimate the Hispanic/non-Hispanic ethnicity of whites who victimize or are victimized by blacks, and we were to perform the extractions necessary to leave only “real” whites in both categories, the effect would be to make Williams’s argument (and that of the white nationalists from whom he initially got this line of attack) even weaker.

Joy-Ann Reid Explains the Fallacies of Bloomberg’s Stop-and-Frisk Defense

Excellent commentary from MSNBC contributor Joy-Ann Reid on why NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s defense of stop-and-frisk policies is utterly without merit…

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The Week in White Deviance, Week 2: A Cultural Cry for Help

Well, another week has gone by, and once again we have a treasure trove of evidence to suggest that there is something seriously wrong in Pleasantville, by which I mean white America of course. Now I don’t mean all white people, mind you, or the entirety of white America, so don’t think I’m being racist. I don’t hate white people. I mean, some of my best friends are white, my wife is white, my kids are white…hell, I’m white; but seriously, when it comes to the broader, you know…white culture, well, something has gone seriously off the rails

Unfair you say? What’s that? It’s wrong to generalize about an entire group based upon the anecdotal examples I’m about to share with you? But that can’t be true, seeing as how white racists are always so quick to point to various destructive behaviors, or dysfunctions, or misdeeds in the black community, or Latino community as evidence of some larger cultural rot. Surely, if the crimes and pathologies of people of color are linked indelibly to their race, either biologically (as Nazis think) or culturally (as Bill O’Reilly and most every conservative in America does) then so too must there be something about whiteness that explains crazy shit like this…

What better place to begin than with a fine upstanding representative of the white male serial killer club? Although most white men are not serial killers, there is no doubt that most serial killers are white men, sorta like Joseph Naso, currently on trial in Northern California. Naso is charged with four murders dating back to the ’70s, but is suspected of raping, assaulting and possibly murdering many more, dating back nearly sixty years. His victims, all sex workers, had the same first and last initials, which is to say that apparently this white male serial killer also has a bizarre form of OCD, which will serve him very well in his no doubt fastidious jail cell. Oh, and as a white guy he naturally thinks himself so incredibly competent that he has opted to be his own lawyer in court. Good move whitey! Nothing like a little narcissism to drive home the point that white culture has damaged you greatly.

And then WTF? There’s this: a beauty queen — and not just any beauty queen but a Utah beauty queen (oh, and did I mention she’s white? Oh yeah, I said Utah, so the odds were good) — tossing bombs from a car! Little homemade bombs, made of shrapnel and toilet bowl cleaner out the window of a car! What culturally defective school did you attend Miss Kendra Gill, where you learned such terroristic behavior? Are the Mormons running their own al-Qaeda camps about which the rest of us should be aware? Did Osama bin Osmond teach you how to do that? And although people appear to be making excuses for you — because you were an honor student or something — I think we all know that, in the end, the pathology of white culture and its inexorable gravitational pull towards random, meaningless delinquency will trump good grades any day. It’s called reverting to the mean. Look it up…honor student.

And oh my God, it’s happened again. Remember last week when I brought to your attention the obvious dangers posed by people who look like Mickael Chiklis, the actor? Yeah, well, looks like there’s another one to once again confirm the stereotype: This time a cop in Greenville, Tennessee who was surfing for child porn on his patrol car computer. So, a perv and a genius all in one! Awesome! Granted, he does look more like Vincent D’Onofrio’s character in Full Metal Jacket, but still, bald, white, and male. Need we say more? I think not: time for a little stop-and-frisk, Kojak.

Oh and speaking of child porn, um, what up Indiana? I mean, damn, I know not all Hoosiers are white, but come on now, everybody knows the way that white culture permeates the place, and yet — or maybe because of that fact, hmmm? — Indiana has had 10 times the number of child porn arrests as a much more populous (and supposedly criminal-infested) New York City, and even two-and-a-half times more than that hotbed of black and brown iniquity known as Chicago! Where are the culture cops, ready to explain to the world what it is about the cornfields of middle America that produces this kind of exploitative deviance?

And please, don’t waste my time telling me how the kiddie porn aficionados are not representative of white people, and how it’s unfair to judge all whites by the acts of a few. Yeah, well, tell it to the folks at American Renaissance — the premier highbrow white supremacist site on the web — who make sure to highlight every crazy, over the top crime by a black person as proof of some genetic predisposition to violence. Hello goose, meet gander…moving on now…

Oh, and wait, back to serial killing, cuz, ya know, it’s a white thing…you wouldn’t understand…

So we have David Kwiatkowski, a traveling hospital tech, who has pled guilty to deliberately infecting patients with Hepatitis C, resulting so far in the death of one and the possible deaths of several others. By his own admission his actions were “killing a lot of people.” Fantastic…another white male “angel of death.” Just what we need. At what point will we start screening out these white men from jobs as techs and nurses, given their historic propensity to try and kill the folks under their care?

Oh, and here we go again, yet another white teacher molesting her underage students. What’s the deal with this, seriously? How can white people keep getting teaching gigs with all the clear and overwhelming evidence (as noted last week) that a disturbing percentage of such folks — especially blonde white women apparently — are sexual predators? And yes, I know that the teacher says she’s innocent, and that her phone was hacked by someone who just so happened to send around the naked pictures she just so happened to have on her phone to a bunch of different boys.Maybe so, but if so, I’ll betcha $20 the hacker was white too, cuz they almost always are.

But at least the white teacher in California who was recently caught packaging up some meth to send through the mail — meth, now there’s a white drug — didn’t have sex with her students, so there’s still hope for the white educators of America.

And dude, really? So, when you checked your bank balance on your ATM and found out you were out of money, your first thought was to rob the bank? And then when you robbed it, you only asked for $1000 to cover your drug debt? I mean, really? Hell, if you’re gonna rob the joint, might as well go big. At $1000 a pop, you’d have had to do the whole thing over again in like a week. And why didn’t you just do what black folks do when they’re broke. In lots of poor black neighborhoods they don’t even have ATM machines or banks, but they have payday loan places and pawn shops and shit. See this is what happens: white privilege gives you the advantage of a local bank branch and your own personal PIN, and still you gotta go all criminal. Next time, why not just do the really white thing, and write a hot check to pay for your crack? I’m sure the dealer would have been happy to take a personal check from you, what with your being white and all. Probably wouldn’t have even asked for ID.

And remember that guy last week who was setting up gang bangs in Minnesota but got caught because he was advertising them on Twitter, printing up (and apparently carelessly dropping) business cards and then charging men to have sex with women? Yeah, well don’t think for one minute that white folks took a week off from some crazy sexual stuff. Oh hell no: so for instance, we have Ms. Terry Boyd, of Wisconsin, who apparently kept two men trapped inside her home until one of them agreed to have sex with her. Clearly she has some entitlement issues. Must be the whiteness.

Gee it reminds me of some other interesting tidbits of evidence suggesting some rather disturbing (or at least interesting) sexual proclivities among the pale-skinned. Like these two young lovers who thought it would be cool, and completely appropriate to have sex on a restaurant table in front of children and families, and then not even have the decency to pay their bill at the end of the night. Or Amanda Linscott, who pulled a gun on a guy she was having sex with in a car…while the guy was driving the car. Because not only is sex in a moving vehicle safe, shooting somebody while they drive is even safer! Or Gerard Streator, also of Wisconsin (like the sex kidnapper lady from a few seconds ago — hmmm, sensing a trend here!), who, drumroll please, had sex with a sofa. Gerard, Gerard, your wife said for you to go “sleep on the couch,” because you were snoring; not to sleep with the couch, because you’re a sick bastard. Or Valerie Nile, who got so bummed when the threesome she’d been planning with her neighbors failed to materialize that she pulled out some knives and threatened to stab them if they didn’t fulfill their neighborly promise…because nothing will get a guy in the mood for sex like some sharp knives in the vicinity, White folks, when will you learn? Just put on some Barry White or something. No need for violence!

Anyway, that’ll do it for this week in white deviance, but check in again soon! I’m sure next week at this time we’ll have yet more concrete proof that white culture is in need of a moral enema, or at least the soothing and palliative balm of a good Leave it to Beaver marathon on Nick at Nite…anything to stop the descent into societal madness that has become our hallmark as of late.

Profiting From Racism? Reflections on White Allyship and the Issue of Compensation

If there is one thing I’m sure of after about two years on Twitter it is that none of us, myself included, do a particularly good job of advancing persuasive ideological or philosophical points in 140 characters. In part, this sad fact owes to the simple truth that, given the platform, it’s just not possible. Twitter is pretty much tailor-made for folks who don’t see the value in compound words, prepositional phrases or substantive content. Which is why it was always the favored mode of communication for the late Andrew Breitbart, who couldn’t be bothered to think very deeply about subjects — and showed no desire to do so, by his own admission — but rather, preferred to just call people names like “cocksucker” followed by various invitations to #blowme or some such manner of vulgarity.

And so, given the perfectly imperfect nature of the medium, I try (though sadly sometimes fail) to cut slack to others when they make arguments that seem facile; after all facile is the nature of the Twitter beast, and any of my tweets could easily sound just as bad or worse than the ones I might criticize.

That said, there are some tweets which, because they don’t come close to the 140 character limit, suggest that their authors really think they have made a meaningful argument, perhaps even said something profound. I sense that such was the case today when someone tweeted something to the effect that white antiracists like myself should stop taking money for our work. The suggestion — and it’s been made plenty of times by others — is that if we were really sincere we’d do our writing, lectures, organizing or other forms of activism for free, and that by receiving income of any kind from the work, we show ourselves to be frauds.

I understand the argument. And on some level I can respect the impulse whence it comes. I’ll admit that at first blush, white folks getting paid to do antiracism work might seem odd. Perhaps it strikes one as even vesting the person being paid with a stake in actually maintaining racism, as a function of simple job security. It’s something I’ve thought about often over the years, and indeed gave serious consideration before I ever decided to throw myself into various forms of antiracism activism, full-time.

But upon close inspection, this argument really does fall apart, rather embarrassingly. Though there are very valid concerns about how we as white folks challenge racism in our professional capacities — issues of accountability, for instance, or making sure to hold up the work of persons of color in our own efforts, and to help empower black and brown voices whenever possible — the idea that it is unethical for whites to be paid for antiracism work is neither a philosophically nor practically logical position.

First, to suggest that white people should not be paid for antiracism work — in whatever realm and field of endeavor, be it writing, speaking, organizing, educating, etc. — implies that entire fields of work should be essentially off limits to a group of people based solely on their racial identity. To the extent few people can afford to work for free, such a prohibition, even if only theoretical (since such a thing can’t be enforced, but is being proposed more as a matter of moral suasion), would all but bar white folks from any kind of antiracism work. And if I really have to explain to people who claim to oppose racism that it is inherently wrong, and by definition racist, to say that certain work should be off limits to certain people solely because of their race, we’re in serious trouble.

But beyond the ethically challenged notion being advocated here, think about the practical implications of the stance. If you’re going to seriously make this argument as a matter of principle, you wouldn’t be able to limit it to persons like myself who speak or write about racism and receive income from those things. You’d have to apply it across-the-board in all areas of employment. Which means, for instance, that no whites would be able to ethically practice civil rights law or take discrimination cases, unless it was for free, perhaps when they weren’t practicing corporate law as their main gig for money. Which is just what we need: white tax attorneys representing clients who are the victims of racism. And no whites could be professors in sociology departments, unless they were willing to ignore matters of race on principle, so as to make sure they weren’t getting paid for challenging racism. No whites could work in non-profits that fight racism. No whites could produce films or other media addressing racism. No whites could write books about racism. We could blog, since blogging is normally not monetized, but the blog would need to look shitty because anything too fancy might lead to attention and that might lead to money. If we work as high school history teachers we wouldn’t be able to use an explicitly antiracist lens for the work, since this might strike some as “profiting” from racism, without which, such a lens would make no sense, after all.

In short, we would have to more or less leave all the antiracist lawyering, teaching, media, writing and organizing to people of color, thereby massively increasing their work load, stress, and responsibilities, and all in the name of solidarity. Some solidarity, that. We could continue to do voluntary antiracist work on the side, in all the free time we’d have after our 40-50 hour work week doing something else, like banking, or teaching geometry, or trading derivatives, or owning a restaurant, or working construction, or whatever. But we can only do these things as hobbies, in effect; sort of like woodworking or stamp collecting or skydiving.

That such a massive reduction in the amount of time one is able to openly challenge racism would not be beneficial to the overall fight against racism seems like it should be obvious, but apparently isn’t. Perhaps folks think that if whites would just stop writing, speaking, teaching, or lawyering against racism, suddenly their jobs and slots would open up for all the people of color out there who want them but are currently not getting them because of us. But how likely is this to be true?

For writers, there are only a handful of us who are white and write books on race with any regularity, and our combined sales wouldn’t amount to one genuine best seller. To think that we are crowding out folks of color from an otherwise eager market — either in publishers or readers — and supplanting the shelf or Kindle space that would otherwise be theirs for the taking is to indicate that one knows nothing about either the world of publishing or the reading habits of the American public. And certainly there is nothing to suggest that if we no longer wrote books on racism, the white readers whom we have long sought to expose to an antiracist analysis would suddenly flock to the works of bell hooks or Marimba Ani or James Baldwin instead. Perhaps they should, and perhaps if they start by reading white antiracist authors (because it’s apparently and sadly easier for them to hear these things from us first), they will then turn to those black and brown sources of wisdom. I certainly encourage all my readers and audiences to do that. But it won’t happen on its own just because we withdraw from the market.

Also note, following the logic of the critics who make these kinds of arguments, there is no substantive moral difference between the white person who writes blatantly racist books and the white person who writes books against racism. To the extent they both sell copies and thereby make any money, they would both be, according to this kind of thinking, “profiting from racism,” and therefore, equally morally objectionable. If anything, those who think there is something uniquely unbecoming about antiracist whites getting paid for our work would have to conclude that we were more morally objectionable than the blatantly racist white author, because at least the latter is consistent: they benefit from and advocate racism, whereas the antiracist profits from racism while supposedly opposing it, and is thus worse: an argument that should be immediately seen by rational people as intellectually bankrupt and morally fetid.

For attorneys, does anyone actually think civil rights law firms are unwilling to hire people of color because of all the white members of the bar who are clamoring to do that kind of work? Is there really some significant crowding out in that field, such that if whites just said, “no more anti-discrimination cases for us,” suddenly black and brown folks would start getting all the cases? Considering that people of color are already quite prevalent in civil rights and anti-discrimination legal work, having whites bow out of the field so as not to “make money off racism” would not do much to boost opportunity for people of color. Not to mention, the simple reduction in the number of attorneys available to take such cases would make it harder for victims to find representation in the first place. In other words, whites refusing to do anti-discrimination law in the name of “not profiting from racism,” would result in far worse outcomes for the actual victims of discrimination, who would either not be able to find an attorney to take their case, or would have to wait even longer for justice because the attorneys of color who now took all the cases would have an incredible backlog. How this would help actual victims of racial discrimination remains a mystery. So white folks interested in going into the legal profession would be limited to corporate law, or criminal law, perhaps; but in the latter case, they could never represent clients of color who may have been overcharged because of racism, or who came to the attention of police because of racial profiling, because to then represent them and get paid, even as a public defender, would be to “profit” from racism.

What this means, is that by the odd moral reasoning of those who claim whites should never be paid for fighting racism, the white attorney who prosecutes black people in a racist justice system is no different from the white attorney who defends a person of color caught up in that system, because they both “profit from racism.” Even though one is seeking to further it and one is fighting against it, it doesn’t matter. Both are equally implicated. Oh, and not just that, but the one who fights to maintain the system is actually more ethical in some ways, because at least they aren’t hypocrites: as white people they benefit from racism and their job actually helps them further racism, so they’re consistent, which is what matters. So the white attorney who represents the NYPD and the city of New York in the recent case against stop-and-frisk is no worse, and perhaps ethically superior to any white attorney who works with the Center for Constitutional Rights: the folks who worked with the plaintiffs who were fighting to end the practice.

As for teachers, if whites become professors, but are morally required not to teach about racism (or at least not too much), how could they teach any number of subjects with equanimity and in a way that was valuable? Anthropology, sociology, history, literature, political science, philosophy: all of these and more are subjects where matters of race can (and really should) figure quite prominently. But this moral code being proposed would tell whites in these fields: stay in your lane, don’t talk about those things, or at least, if you do, don’t take a paycheck for the hours you spend on subjects like that. Oh, and if you’re male don’t teach about sexism in class; and if you’re straight you need to ignore straight supremacy; and here’s the really big one: no professors can talk about economic inequality and poverty (at least not in a way that tries to convince students that such things are bad and to be opposed), because, after all, professors are not poor, so to teach about economic injustice — to raise consciousness around that subject — is to “profit off the oppression of others.” So the right-wingers in the Business School can keep getting big salaries because at least there’s no contradiction in their work: they praise the market system and make lots of money, so they — the business school shills for predatory capitalism — are ethical. But the white or male or straight educator who speaks about injustice is unethical, because it’s wrong to get paid for anti-oppression work if you’re a dominant group member. It’s OK, or at least ethically consistent to do oppression work, just not anti-oppression work. Yes, of course.

In my case, what might I have done had I not become an activist and organizer, and then a writer, lecturer and educator? Well, given my interests and particular skill sets I would have likely gone either to law school or graduate school in sociology. I considered at various points doing both of these. Had I become a lawyer, the only kind of law I would have been interested in practicing would have been civil rights law. But if being paid for fighting racism is morally wrong when one is white, then doing this would have been morally reprehensible. So instead of that kind of law, those who put forth this argument are basically saying that I should have had no choice but to work for some corporation, or do personal injury law, or perhaps even represent the white folks in the companies getting sued for discrimination, because then at least I would be ethically consistent. Much better for the struggle: defending racists from charges of racism.

And if I’d gone into sociology I would have been unable to actually teach using any progressive sociological theories known to the discipline, all of which involve analyzing class, race, gender and other identity-based power relationships and the way they shape the society in which we live. I wouldn’t have been able to talk about racism, because white!, or sexism, because male! or the class system because, hello!… professor, or heterosexism, because straight. In other words, for white folks who care deeply about oppression, and want to challenge it full-time as more than a hobby or thing we do on the weekend, too bad, there would be no outlet. And this is what some would call justice. Not because it would actually improve the conditions of life for a single person of color, but because it would worsen the conditions of life for certain white people, and for some, that is considered an adequate substitute for the former.

As for speakers like myself, who travel the country and lecture at colleges, high schools, and to professional associations and community groups, if we who are white stopped charging for our talks (either because we were independently wealthy and didn’t need money or because we decided to take a vow of poverty), would this free up space for speakers of color? No. In fact it would result in more crowding out of those voices. If a school or organization can bring me in and not even have to pay for it, because I’m trying to be all super-ethical by not “profiting from racism,” or, alternately, bring in a person of color who will actually charge them for their wisdom, guess who’s getting the gig? The free guy. People like free, and if you offer it to them, they will take it, over paying thousands of dollars to someone else.

And frankly, even the notion that by speaking on campuses, white antiracist scholars and educators bump people of color from speaking spots they could have and should have received is demonstrably false. First, there aren’t that many of us. Secondly, the vast majority of speakers on campuses addressing racism are, in fact, already people of color (as it should be), and they wouldn’t get the slots currently going to white speakers if we bowed out. Usually the schools that bring me in, for instance, have 3-4 such events throughout the year and I’m the only one of those speakers who’s white, and I was chosen specifically to fill the “white ally” slot, meaning that if I didn’t go, and if another white person didn’t, that slot just wouldn’t be filled. The event simply wouldn’t happen at all: it would just be one less antiracism event at that campus that year.

There’s also a simple math problem here. There are probably at least 1500 colleges and universities in the country which bring in speakers on race and racism in a given year. Some only do one such event, while many of them do multiple events. So it’s safe to say that there are probably at least 2500 such speeches on campuses nationwide, annually. In a good year, I might get 50. That leaves 2,450 over which I have no control, and upon which my presence in the work has no impact whatsoever. Even if you added together all the white folks speaking as guest lecturers on campuses about racism in a given year, the total number of events might reach, say, 300 (and this is probably a stretch). That 300 speeches by white folks cannot be the reason for any given person of color not getting one of the other 2200 should be so obvious as to not even need mentioning. But there it is.

As for the corollary argument that getting paid while doing antiracism work somehow creates an incentive to maintain the system, and so those who receive income from such work are really frauds who don’t want to see the system end, perhaps it would do us well to think about the implications of this argument. First, the argument would also apply to people of color who do the work. If compensation for fighting a system of oppression by definition means that one is vested in the maintenance of the problem, that logic would have to apply across the board. Is that what people believe? That’s certainly what right wingers and those who support racism have long said about the civil rights establishment: that they want to see racism continue so they’ll be able to keep their jobs and incomes. But if that argument is unfair and absurd when made about people of color in the work, why is it suddenly legitimate when applied to whites?

And by this logic, one could also say — and would have to, by necessity — that doctors “profit from illness” and as such want to see people remain unhealthy. And teachers, of any subject, “profit from ignorance,” and want to see people remain uneducated. And that grunt soldiers on the front lines “profit from war,” and really, deep down want to see war continue because getting shot at is so much fun, and anyway, what would they do if peace broke out? By this logic, the attorneys who fought Big Tobacco were “profiting off cancer” no less so than the attorneys who defended those companies and lied about the cancer-causing properties of cigarettes.

And by this logic, organizations that do advocacy against poverty and on behalf of poor people and communities — fighting for things like a living wage, or a more stable social safety net — should only hire poor people to do that work (which might be cool, actually), but then continue to pay them a sub-poverty wage, in violation of the very things they are fighting for, because the minute their incomes put the workers above the poverty line they would be, under this logic, “profiting from the misery of others,” and thus reveal themselves to be automatic hypocrites.

Seriously, there are legitimate discussions to be had about the level of compensation that people doing social justice work should receive (or any form of work, actually) and what their obligations are to give back, spread the opportunities and attention around — as well as some of the money — and especially to persons of color and efforts at the community level that seek to address these systemic issues. Those conversations are welcome ones, and I have discussed some of my own thinking about those matters elsewhere, notably here. But that discussion is one that will require a commitment to conversation and a depth of thought far greater than that which is required and rewarded on Twitter or Tumblr or wherever. And so far, most of the folks snarking on the latter haven’t shown themselves willing to engage that more complex discussion. But just because social networking platforms encourage us to limit our thinking to pithy little quips and hashtags and truncated thoughts, does not oblige us to think or converse in such a manner. I know that I could use a reminder of this from time to time, as could we all.

Tim Wise on CNN w/Don Lemon, 8/10/13: 5 Things Whites Can Do to Improve Race Relations

Here’s my appearance on CNN on August 10, 2013, with Don Lemon, responding to his “5 Things Blacks Can Do” to Improve Their Situation…

The Week in White Deviance: Or Daaaammm…Why Are We So Crazy??

Every week it seems as though we get more and more evidence suggesting that something is seriously wrong with white culture and the white community that keeps on reproducing it. And sadly, white leaders seem reluctant to address the problems. They would rather point fingers at others, shifting blame for various social crises onto black folks, forgetting that personal responsibility — the right-wing mantra — means personal responsibility. As in, ya know, you. In other words, it is time for white conservatives, in keeping with the notion of personal responsibility to toughen up and have the courage to face the myriad pathologies in our own communities and to figure out what it is about white culture that can explain them.

And so, let us review the week in white deviance.

First, what is it about white culture that causes white men to kidnap young girls with whom they’re obsessed, after burning down that girl’s family’s home and killing her mom and brother? I mean that is some crazy shit. Why can’t adult white men at least wait until the objects of our affection attain legal age before burning down their homes, killing their families and taking them on an extended, involuntary road trip? And what’s with the whole “boobytrapping” thing, in order not to get caught? Why do white men gotta be all MacGyver when we go on the lam?

What’s up with that?

Oh, and why are white people so nasty? I mean, did you hear about Scott Pollock, this creepy dude in Minnesota who was setting up gang-bangs for a living? And not just that, but advertising that shit on Twitter? Yeah, as in, “Woo-Hoo, Gang Bang 2nite #getyourfuckon” What. In. The. Hell? According to the criminal complaint, Pollock was busted at a Quality Inn (because what hotel chain says gang-bang better than a Quality Inn?), when undercover cops paid $20 to screw some 45-year old (probably also white) woman, who was trying to bang 45 guys in one night for her birthday. Eeeeew!. Come on white people! Just stop it already. Forty-five guys in one night? And that’s your birthday gift to yourself? Gonorrhea? What’s wrong with a hot stone massage? Oh wait, that’s what you thought a hot stone massage meant? OK, never mind then, but still, really?

And speaking of nasty — but like, a different kind of nasty — what is it about whiteness that explains all this hoarding bullshit? Like, just piling up garbage in your house and letting it rot for years at a time? You ever see those hoarding shows on TV? Now I know that occasionally there are some black and brown folks on there, climbing over a decade’s worth of their own shit and bottles of piss and plates of food that have been there since that Minnesota gang-bang woman was only doing 21 guys in one night to celebrate finally being able to drink legally; but don’t pretend you didn’t notice how the overwhelming majority are pasty white. What’s up with that? Why do white people care so little about our homes? Why do we care so little for ourselves that we will live in squalor, on purpose? And then when city officials try and make us clean up our disgusting funk pits, or threaten to take our property because it’s a health hazard, why do we go all ape shit and start shooting people, like that Rockne Newell guy in Pennsylvania this week? I mean really now, why so quick to violence? Why no impulse control? And when will white political officials and civic leaders speak out?

And then there’s this wacko, who wasn’t content to live in her own shit and piss, so she was hoarding cats (103 of them), so as to really ramp up the ammonia and fecal load. Nice. So when might the SPCA address the clearly white pathology of animal cruelty?

And oh, wait, back to the crazy sex ish. Sorry. Thought I was done with that, and then this came over the wire: some Grizzly Adams looking motherfucker who’s a sheriff’s deputy in Salt Lake City, and who, in his own words, “beat the fuck” out of his own father because…wait for it…his wife was riding his daddy like a human Tilt-a-Whirl, or, ya know, like a 45-year old Minnesota woman. For the love of God won’t somebody please explain to me why a white man would screw his own daughter-in-law, in his son’s home? I mean, get a room people. Surely they must have Quality Inns in Utah.

And then there’s this: a white male youth sports’ coach in Kentucky apparently molesting six kids over whom he had supervisory responsibilities. You might be thinking, why does his race matter? Why mention that? Well, because, silly white people, remember what Bill O’Reilly taught you: pathology and deviant behavior can never just be about individually pathological people. There must be a connection to others who look like them. And so, in this case, guys who look like that actor, Michael Chiklis, are just gonna have to suck it up and be prepared to be profiled. Sorry about that Cheetah Chrome. But in your hearts, you know it’s the right thing to do. For the kids.

And white people, take note, your Egg McMuffin is not important enough to get in a fight over. Why can’t you wait your turn? Why you gotta stab people in the butt to get yours first? Ronald can make more, white folks. There are plenty of eggs and lots of ham, so just chill.

And when you kill people, why you gotta go and store their dead bodies in freezers, like this dude they just found last week? Were you planning on thawing him out later? Making soup? What? Dammit White America, when will the madness stop?

And what is up with all these white teachers having sex with their students? That’s right, another one accused of getting it on with a 15-year old, this time in New Jersey. Oh, and another one in Texas. And note, almost all of the teachers who have been caught doing this stuff — and there have been dozens and dozens in the last few years — have been white. Although many incidents never come to public attention, if the larger body of perpetrators racially mirrors those about whom we do know, the numbers could be staggering. Estimates are that as many as 4.5 million students nationwide are subjected to sexual misconduct on the part of school employees between kindergarten and 12th grade. This could mean literally hundreds of thousands of white sexual predators stalking the halls outside the biology lab, or AP English. Where are the white leaders on this? What is is about white society that is leading these white educators to molest the kids in their classes?

Oh, and yeah, Charles Manson. Just sayin. We gotta own that crazy bastard every couple of years.

And why is it that pretty much every time you hear about parents refusing medical treatment for their children — because they just know God’s gonna heal the kid — and then the children die, like happened again recently, it’s white folks? What is it about white people that allows us to so often believe in a magical God who can’t manage to stop wars or famine or genocides or global warming, but is gonna suddenly take time out of his busy schedule doing nothing to save our child from a fatal illness? How many more white children have to die in the service of this theological fanaticism? And I’m not saying that folks of color don’t believe in God. Oh hell no, they are more likely to believe in God than white folks, in fact. But when their kid is sick and dying, they take them to a doctor. Because, medicine, white folks, medicine. Sometimes it really works. Check it out.

And really now, sexually assaulting your female patients while you have them hopped up on pain meds, Doctor white guy? Where did you learn such deviance, such criminality? Was it perhaps from a white community where anesthesia sex is considered normal behavior? Don’t even bother denying it. We all know the truth, ya sick bastard.

Oh yeah, and Whitey Bulger. Shoulda’ known, with a name like Whitey. And from a cesspool of white pathology like South Boston no less! Maybe when Ted Nugent gets done machine gunning black and Latino folks in South Central L.A. from a helicopter, like he’s fantasized about, he can turn the chopper around and slaughter some nice former altar boys-turned mobsters in Southie.

Ooh, and I know it’s an old story but can we just revisit why white folks like Patricia Krentcil gotta go and burn themselves to a crisp in tanning booths? C’mon white people. Obama was trying to save us with that tanning booth tax. It wasn’t racist of him, like some of our yahoos apparently think. Hell, it was a gift, but oh no, we’re addicted, obsessed, unable to pull ourselves away from the UV lamps. Where’s Dr. Drew? Where’s that Van Vondren guy from that Intervention show? When will white America rise up and hold ourselves accountable for trying so hard to transform ourselves into human pita chips?

And holy hell, what is going on with white culture that can explain why white folks are always lying about their kid having some fatal disease so as to get sympathy and money from people? Seriously, I know you’ve heard of this, right? Some white mom who’s all, “Oh my kid has cancer,” and they don’t, but the mom shaves the kid’s head like they’ve been through chemo or some shit, and then sits back and collects the cash, like this sick ass. And when they get caught they always say, “Oh, I don’t know what made me do that.” Yeah? Well I think I do. Whiteness, motherfucker, whiteness. Too harsh? Too bad. Sometimes you just have to face the awful truth about white people and grifters, and how they’re pretty much, ya know, the same thing.

And finally, what makes white folks so racist? Like homicidal racist? Like, Walton Henry Butler racist. Which is to say, so racist that he can shoot a black guy in the head, just because the black guy asked him not to use racial slurs around children, and then get all indignant when the cops arrest him, for, ya know, shooting a guy in the head! Because as Butler explained, “I only shot a nigger.” Oh, well that clears it up. Thanks for the clarification, and for the confession. Now enjoy prison, jackhole.

And rest assured, it won’t be nearly as nice as the Quality Inn at the Mall of America.

As plenty of white folks can readily attest.

Facing the Cultural Rot of White America (a PARODY) – Video From All In With Chris Hayes

Hilarious and on-point segment from All In with Chris Hayes, lampooning the black-culture-bashing antics of Bill O’Reilly and others on the right by flipping the script and examining signs of white cultural decay…

Tim Wise on Disrupt With Karen Finney (MSNBC), 8/3/13 – Responding to the Right’s Racist Rhetoric

My appearance on Disrupt with Karen Finney on MSNBC, along with Rashad Robinson of Color of Change, from August 3. We’re discussing the right-wing rhetoric on race and their cultural critiques of the black community since the Zimmerman trial.

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Stop-and-Frisk – The High School Senior (WhereIamGoing.org) Powerful Video

Amazingly powerful video from the whereiamgoing.org project, calling attention to the dehumanizing and patently unjust practice of stop-and-frisk in NYC. Pass it around and join the fight against racial profiling!