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t's amazing how many crazy white people there are out there, none of whom feel the wrath of the racial pathology police as a result of their depravity. Killing parents is one of our specialties. So in 1994, a white guy in New York killed his mom for serving the wrong pizza; in 1997, a white 17 year-old in Alabama killed his parents with an axe and sledgehammer; and in 1996, Rod Ferrell, leader of a "vampire cult" in Murray, Kentucky, bludgeoned another member's parents to death, and along with the victims' daughter, drank their blood so as to "cross over to the gates of hell." Which brings me to rule number one for identifying the race of criminals you hear about. If the crime involved vampirism, Satan worship, or cannibalism, you can bet your ass the perpetrator was white. Never fails. Every damned time. But you'll never hear anyone ask what in the hell it is about white parents that makes their children want to cut off their heads and boil them in soup pots.
Ditto for infanticide. When Susan Smith drowned her boys in South Carolina, she had hundreds of people looking for a mythical black male carjacker, because that's what danger is supposed to look like. We should have known better, especially when you consider how many white folks off their kids: like Brian Peterson and Amy Grossberg, in Delaware, who dumped their newborn in the garbage; or the New Jersey girl at her prom who did the same in the school bathroom; or Brian Stewart, the white guy from St. Louis who injected his son with the AIDS virus to avoid paying child support; or the Pittsburgh father who bludgeoned his 5-year old twins to death when they couldn't find their Power Ranger masks, and were late for daycare; or the white babysitter outside Chicago who bound two kids with duct tape before shooting them and turning the gun on himself.
None of these folks' race was offered as a possible factor in their crimes. No one is writing books about the genetic or white cultural causes of such behavior. In 1995, when a poor Latina killed her daughter in New York by smashing her head against a wall, every major news source in America covered the tragedy, and asked questions about her background, focusing on her "underclass" status, but when a white Arizona man the same month decapitated his youngest son in the desert because he was convinced the child was possessed by the devil, coverage was sparse, and mention of race or cultural background was nowhere to be found.
Or consider thrill killing, spree killing, and animal mutilation: three other white favorites which occur frequently but without racial identification of the persons involved. In October, 1997, a white male teen obsessed with Jeffrey Dahmer killed a 13 year-old to "see what it feels like." In New Jersey, a 15 year-old white male killed an 11 year-old selling candy door-to-door, but only after sexually assaulting him. In late 1997, a white couple in California was arrested for "hunting women," and torturing and mutilating them in the back of their van. At Indiana University, a white male burned four cats alive in a lab, while in Martin, Tennessee, two white teens set a duck on fire at the city's recreational complex, and in Missouri, two white teens killed 23 cats for fun, prompting their white neighbors not to say that there's something wrong with white kids today, but rather, that "boys will be boys."
It makes one wonder, why aren't the authorities doing something to stem the tide of white mayhem? Why no heightened surveillance and police presence in their neighborhoods? Why no crackdowns on immigration from Europe—particularly from the former Yugoslavia and Ireland: two places known to produce a particularly dangerous brand of white person? Why no demands for white politicians to disavow white deviance, the way Jesse Jackson, and any other black figure in America is expected to speak out against black crime and violence? And why no call for an immediate scientific inquiry to determine if in fact the crimes committed disproportionately by white folks might be genetically predetermined?
By the Numbers
nd by what standards are people of color the ones with fucked up values and behavior anyway? According to a 1994 study of college students, whites are far more likely to drink, they average three times as many drinks per week as blacks, are 50% more likely to drink to the point of hangover, and about 70% more likely to drink to the point of vomiting. And yet, based on news coverage of college drinking, one would think boozing it up was an equal opportunity pasttime. In September of 1997, Time ran a feature story claiming, "colleges are among the nation's most alcohol-drenched institutions. America's 12 million undergraduates drink 4 billion cans of beer a year, and spend $446 on alcoholic beverages—more than they spend on soft drinks and textbooks combined." Yet there was no mention of the racially-uneven drinking habits on these "alcohol-drenched" campuses. Likewise for a recent Mother Jones article, about drinking among women: every woman in every photo getting wasted was white, and needless to say there aren't many "underclass" women of color going to martini and cigar bars (featured in the piece); yet the whiteness of these budding alcoholics is glossed over by the writer, and probably by most readers as well.
Or how about drunk driving, a pathological behavior which claims about 17,000 lives a year, and in which whites are twice as likely to engage as blacks? According to government figures, white men drove drunk 85 million times in 1993, compared to 5.8 million times for black men. And yet, officials continually downplay the racial inequity of drunk driving. James Fell, chief of Research and Evaluation at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says mentioning such stats is "counterproductive," while Linda Algood, president of the Broward County, Florida chapter of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), has been quoted as saying: "A drunk driver is a drunk driver." Funny how irrelevant race becomes when its visibility might reflect badly on members of the dominant majority.
The same is true for drug use. A 1996 study by the Department of Health and Human Services found that 74% of drug users are white, while only 14% are black. There are 9.7 million whites using illegal drugs in the U.S., compared with 1.8 million blacks. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, whites ages 12 to 21 are a third more likely than blacks to have used illegal drugs; twice as likely to smoke pot regularly; and 160% more likely to have tried cocaine. But despite the white face of drug use, most law enforcement agencies' criminal "profiles" of drug users, couriers, and pushers read like a description of urban youth of color. Of course, in The End of Racism, D'Souza explains that white drug abuse isn't really a problem, because, they "can take advantage of expensive treatment programs," whereas black "crack addicts" can't. In other words, whites are to be excused for their behavior, since the ability to pay your way out of trouble makes such pathology, well, less pathological.
As for the value systems of young blacks compared to whites, surveys in 1994 found that black high school seniors are 32% more likely than white seniors to say professional success and accomplishment are "extremely important," equally likely to say having a good marriage and happy family life are extremely important; 26% more likely to say "making a contribution to society" is extremely important, and 75% more likely than white seniors to say "being a leader in their community" is extremely important. And since the folks critiquing "black values" typically consider religion a "civilizing" institution, it should be noted that black high school seniors are more likely than whites to attend religious services weekly, and almost twice as likely to say "religion plays a very important role" in their lives. Overall, blacks spend about twice as many hours a week in religious activity as members of any other racial group.
