Looking Out: Public thinking

"Why, I wondered, did no-one ask, 'Will the justice system survive?' after an all-White jury set free the White policemen who beat Rodney King? — Larry Conley
Recently I read the well-crafted essay of a very brave man. It was published in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution's August 27, issue. Larry Conley edits that newspaper's "Perspective" page. The title of the essay speaks for itself: "Hypocrisy underlies 'race card'".
The question "Will the justice system survive?" was put to Conley by one of his colleagues. Much if not most of white USA is asking the question. In his essay Conley wrote that the colleague's implication "was that [O.J.] Simpson's attorneys were using what prosecutor Marcia Clark called the 'race card' to get Simpson off".
Several things impressed me about Conley's essay, not the least of which was that, unlike almost every other journalistic piece written on the Simpson trial, he refused to suggest, comment or imply things about Simpson's innocence or guilt, which of course is the proper position. It takes a good deal of courage to do that if you write for an Atlanta, Georgia, newspaper, one that I think is more politically motivated that the man in the White House.
Equally worthy of mention is the theme running throughout the piece which suggests, quite accurately, that as long as the so-called "race card" is played, and the outcome favours the bigoted status quo, there is no self-righteous uproar for an overhaul of the justice system.
The uproar now is coming from the same people who sat quietly and smugly by when an all-white jury freed the racist white policemen who beat and dehumanised Rodney King. Of course, in their defence, we have to take into account the so-called "big n——r" syndrome that constantly fills white America's heart with terror.
These are the same people who want the child welfare system ended, largely because they resent paying tax money into it. They are under the mistaken impression that the main recipients of welfare money are black and brown people, but the truth is that there are far more white people on welfare than there are black and brown people combined.
These are the same people who claim to hate the federal government, but will vote to raise the taxes in local referendums in order to build more prisons while at the same time petitioning the federal government for matching funds, to help them build those prisons.
These are the same people voting to end children's Head Start programs; and the training centres that taught those children's parents how to become skilled workers are being closed down routinely so that the state's prisons are bursting at the seams with poor the, and with people of colour.
Public thinking these days amounts to little more than a ball of racist and political clay. It is being moulded by bigotries and hypocrisies that are a part of the fabric of US society. The question Conley asks at the head of his article was answered more than 125 years ago by the English author William Hazlitt: "There is not a more mean, stupid, dastardly, pitiful, selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful animal than the Public. It is the greatest of cowards, for it is afraid of itself and the people it has abused."
[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He is happy to receive letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G2-51, GD&CC, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA.]