This piece reminds me of a an angry action I received to a story I wrote several years ago for Reason. The story itself was about how federal prosecutors had used lying jailhouse informants to wrongly convict a black family of drug dealing. /1
theamericanconservative.com/articles/calli…
theamericanconservative.com/articles/calli…
While in high school, the boys in the family were known to date white girls. This angered local law enforcement, and put the family in their crosshairs. One of the boys ended up marrying a white girl. I interviewed her parents for the article. They told me how they ... /2
.. were upset that their daughter would marry a black man, and how they'd never even though they'd invite a black man into their house. But they they changed, grew to love him, and were outraged when he was wrongly convicted. /3
In the story, I basically suggested that the couple was racist prior to meeting their new son-in-law. After it was published, they were really angry that I had described them that way. They insisted that while they previously didn't think black and white people . . . /4
... should mix, date, or marry, they were *never racist.* And they were offended that I would describe them that way. Racist people, one family member told me, want to hang black people from trees. They would never support such a thing. /5
I believe they were completely sincere about this complaint. But it was an interesting lesson. Very few people think of themselves as racist, even as they make arguments and support policies that very clearly are. /6
Sorry for the typos! /end
