Values, the O.J. Verdict, and Right-To-Carry, or A Statistician Explains a Conundrum (Zimmerman)

    I had another column ginned up for this week’s offering but then I read something an hour ago which made me save it for a later date and address something else that’s been on my mind, namely blacks and Right-To-Carry laws. Some background:

    Those of you who are regular readers of Ross in Range may notice a similarity in layout and scheduling (but not necessarily content) to another, much more widely read Internet column called Fred On Everything at http://www.fredoneverything.net/ColMenu.html by Fred Reed. 

    This is not a coincidence. I have been a regular reader of Mr. Reed’s writings for a number of years, from back when he started working for my friend Bob Brown at Soldier of Fortune. Mr. Reed is twelve years older than I, a Marine and decorated Vietnam combat vet, and worked as a police beat columnist for the Washington Times for several years. As such, he has experience in areas I do not, though we’ve both spent a lot of time in the Third World’s more interesting backwaters, often with a girl or a gun in our hands. (Couldn’t resist that one. I think Mickey Spillane takes control of my keyboard sometimes.) Fred is now an expatriate living in Mexico and spends his time writing, scuba diving, hanging out in bars, flirting with women, and apparently doing exactly what he wants. 

    I like Fred’s weekly columns, and while some (like #199) try to be too cute for my taste, others are absolute knockouts. The latter variety often deal with issues of race and education—the so-called "melting pot" of whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians in America, and how much (if any) each of these groups is indeed melting. 

    Fred’s background, especially his years in D.C., gives him the right to speak with firsthand authority on matters I usually avoid: race relations in general and what most people (privately) think of as The Black Problem in particular.

    My avoidance is not from cowardice but out of an innate belief that a person who (starting at age three) enjoyed attendance at the best private schools he could get into has not the credentials to be lecturing on matters of sociology and the underclass.

    In that light, when Fred writes about blacks and education, given his experience in D.C., I read very carefully. He’s hit some home runs on this subject before, but I thought his 200^th column "Whiteness Studies" was an especially long ball, as was #180 "What’s a White Guy to Do?"    (Side note: If you are a regular reader of Fred’s column, be aware that his view of the black/white state of affairs in America is more bleak than my own. I am willing to concede that might be due to Fred having more accurate information, however.)

    Central to Fred’s commentary is that in D.C., blacks run the whole political and educational system, they have plenty of school funding, and the teachers are paid far more than the national average. The results are terrible. What to do? Neither he nor I have any idea.

    At the risk of being accused of blaming blacks for all their own problems, it strikes me that as long as so many blacks have such different value systems from their white counterparts, we will never see the generally easy coexistence that whites enjoy with Asians and, to a somewhat lesser degree, Hispanics. 

    Never was this brought home so dramatically for me as at the O.J. Simpson trial. I am not talking about the fact that a largely black jury reached a verdict of Not Guilty in the murder of two whites. This has happened many times in our history on the other side of the racial aisle. I am referring to what one columnist* called "the absolutely breathtaking reaction" of America’s entire black population when the verdict was announced. Across the country, Black America was positively jubilant.

    When white Americans see film footage of some pus-gut like Bull Connor and his thugs using fire hoses and billy clubs on peaceful black freedom marchers, the near-universal reaction is revulsion. The same is true of lynchings. 

    It is true that over the years there have been cases where an all-white jury has ignored the evidence and freed a white man for a vicious crime because his victim was black, but White America as a whole has never, in my memory, cheered such events. I would like you to engage in a little exercise here with me. I would like you to envision the O.J. Simpson case, with the races reversed.

    Imagine a white Hall of Fame footballer turned actor/pitchman, like Howie Long.  Imagine Howie had a moderately hot-looking black ex-wife with a high school education and breast implants. (To my knowledge Mr. Long is not so encumbered, but bear with me.) 

    Imagine that there was overwhelming DNA and other evidence that Howie had butchered this black ex-wife and a black male acquaintance of hers. Imagine the entire Howie Long Trial being televised for months, and being called the "Trial of the Century."  Imagine Greta Van Susteren's TV career being "made" by her televised legal commentary on The Howie Long Trial.   Imagine that during The Howie Long Trial there is the revelation that one of the black cops involved with Howie’s arrest disliked whites and had used the terms "white devil" and "honky" in the past.  Imagine the defense team running with this and arguing that all the city's black officers tampered with evidence and engaged in a huge conspiracy to frame Howie for the two murders.  Finally, imagine a largely white jury telling us they had weighed the evidence and decided Howie was Not Guilty. 

    Can you, in your most reckless imaginings, see White America having a mass celebration over this Not Guilty verdict, and repeating the mantra The black bitch (and her friend, presumably) deserved it? I can’t. Not at all.  Similarly, can you imagine whites all across America being particularly upset at the possibility that Howie might get sent to Death Row for murdering two black people?  The concept is ludicrous.

    And yet whites in America have come to expect this very sort of thing of blacks.  We expect blacks to set fire to their own neighborhoods and loot the black-owned businesses therein when a jury verdict in a racially-charged case displeases them.  And they do.

    Which brings me to the Right-To-Carry issue. Missouri is unfortunately one of the five remaining states which absolutely prohibit honest adults from carrying a concealed firearm for protection. There is no permit available here under any circumstances. The legislature passed Right-To-Carry last month, but it is not yet law, and there is fear that our Governor may veto the measure, although I believe there are enough votes for a veto override.  (7/3/03 update: Gov. Holden just vetoed RTC in a big ceremony this afternoon in St. Louis County. 9/11/03 Update: The Missouri House and Senate just overrode Governor Holden's veto of RTC.  Missourians just got some of their rights back, after 129 years.)  I wrote an article for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on this issue, but they want you to pay $2.95 to read it online. I'll put my article up on my site when I get the text loaded.

    When discussing this matter, people inevitably bring up Missouri’s 1999 ballot referendum on Right-To-Carry, which was narrowly defeated (with a dismal 30% voter turnout, I might add.) The fact is that the measure passed in almost every county in the state. The defeat came from the fact that two very large urban precincts in St. Louis and Kansas City were over 90% opposed. At the time, I thought this was vote fraud (and to be honest, I still think that was a factor). Ninety percent? You can’t get ninety percent agreement on anything. 

    A black businessman (who was one of the handful of St. Louis city residents who voted for the referendum) and I were discussing the recent passage of RTC. I brought up the referendum results, and said I could not understand why blacks had been so uniformly against the measure. The proposal was a "shall issue" one, where if you satisfied the requirements (training, fingerprints, no criminal record, no mental illness, etc.) you couldn’t be denied the permit just because the sheriff didn’t like the idea of people besides the police having guns. The businessman stared at me.

    "I thought you were good at math," he said.  I allowed as to how I felt that I was. "Then you must never have taken Statistics and Probability." I told him I had done this also, and that it had been one of the most rewarding math classes I had ever taken (and incidentally was taught by Amherst’s professor Denton, who is black.) "Then you must be cowed enough by political correctness to never think of applying statistics and probability to anything involving race." Finally I admitted that this last accusation might be true.

    "Then I am going to ask you two true-or-false questions. One: Do blacks in the city of St. Louis have large extended families?" I answered in the affirmative. "Two: Is it true that in St. Louis, over 40% of the black males between the ages of 17 and 25 have criminal records?" I told him that was also true, unfortunately. 

    "So here is the important question: What are the chances of a black person of voting age in St. Louis having at least one relative with a criminal record? Assume we define ‘relative’ broadly, to include the young men who father the children of our female relatives, whether married to them or not." He sat there waiting for my answer.

    "Are we talking fathers, stepfathers, uncles, brothers, stepbrothers, male cousins, sons, stepsons, nephews, mothers’ boyfriends, aunts' boyfriends, sisters’ boyfriends, daughters’ boyfriends, stepdaughters’ boyfriends, female cousins’ boyfriends, nieces’ boyfriends, as well as anyone actually married to a female relative?" I asked. He nodded. "Then I’d say there's nearly 100% probability that at least one relative would have a criminal record." He smiled at me like a teacher who has just gotten the right answer from one of his slower students.

    "So," I said, "I'm to believe that the black sentiment in St. Louis was ‘I wish young Tyrone would stop robbing people, but I don’t want one of the people he robs to shoot him dead.’ Is that it?" I asked.
    "You’ve got it exactly," he told me.

    "But why? I mean, honestly, if some guy was married to my cousin and mugged people for a living, I’d figure he was making his own choices and could damn well take the chance of being blasted. I wouldn’t vote away my rights to help his sorry ass."

    "What if it wasn’t just your one cousin’s husband, but 40% of all your male relatives between the ages of 18 and 25? What if that was, oh, I don’t know, a dozen people?"  Suddenly I didn’t know what to say. 

    "You don’t feel that way," I said finally.

    "I’m an Uncle Tom. I’ve recently come to realize that I now have very few black friends." 

    This statement filled me with an ineffable sadness.  I know that we will get Right-To-Carry here in Missouri, even if the Governor vetoes it. That’s not the issue. And every black Missourian with a criminal record isn’t going to get shot by an armed citizen—we all know that, too.   In over 98%** of the cases where a licenseholder encounters a criminal, he stops the crime without firing a shot. It’s that way in Atlanta and every other big city with a large black population in a Right-To-Carry state, so there’s no reason to think it would be any different in Kansas City or St. Louis.

    But the O.J. trial and what the black businessman said has stuck with me. What hope can we have, I wonder, if the values that blacks hold dear are mutually exclusive of those held by whites?
                                                                                                                    John Ross 6/23/03

Link to John Ross article