BURDEN OF PROOF ON UNEQUAL JUSTICE

It's always the little stuff that turns around to bite you on the backside.

Case in point: A couple of weeks ago, I observed in this space that there is
"different justice in this country for those who are white enough or wealthy
enough to afford it.'' I said this en route to a larger point, and it never
occurred to me that the remark was anything but a self-evident truth, one
that required no explanation, much less a defense.

Shows what I know. I've since heard from dozens of white women and men
wounded by the contention that their skin color might buy them leniency in
the criminal justice system. The influence of wealth, they didn't argue. But
about whiteness, they had a conniption. Some even demanded that I produce
proof.

From my perspective, it's not unlike being asked to produce proof that fire
is hot. But for the record:

* According to "The Real War on Crime: The Report of the National Criminal
Justice Commission,'' African-Americans account for 13 percent of all
regular drug users, but 35 percent of those arrested for drug possession, 55
percent of those convicted for drug possession and 74 percent of those
imprisoned for drug possession.

* Then there's "And Justice for Some,'' a 2000 study whose sponsors include
the U.S. Justice Department itself. Researchers reported that black and
Latino offenders receive harsher treatment than white ones with similar
records at every step of the justice system.

To cite just one finding: Among kids who have not been in juvenile prisons
before, a black defendant in a drug case is a whopping 48 times more likely
to be incarcerated than a white one with the same record.

There's more, but you get the point.

I offer these statistics, by the way, only because I was asked and not out
of any illusion that they will sway those who find it necessary to think
race plays no part in the U.S. justice system. I refuse to believe -- for
the sake of my sanity as much as anything -- that they represent the
predominant mindset of my white countrymen and women. But it seems sadly
obvious to me that, at the very least, they speak for a sizable minority.

And, truth to tell, it's not that such people fail to grasp the racial
realities of the justice system that galls me most. Rather, it's the
implication of that failure, what it says about the inability or
unwillingness of some white people to accept the simple, obvious fact that,
where race is concerned, America is a game rigged in their favor.

For the life of me, I can't understand why some people find this so hard to
see. I mean, where gender is concerned, the game is rigged in favor of men,
with the possible exception of men in divorce courts. The point is not that
all men are sexists, but that all benefit from a system that is. For a man
to pretend otherwise flies in the face of the apparent. Just as it does for
a white person to claim, in a nation with a recent history of racial
apartheid, that whiteness does not have its privileges.

Fact is, when it comes to making trouble go away, the only color superior to
white is green. Ask O.J.

As the kids say, I'm not mad at'cha. Indeed, one reason I've grown
increasingly ambivalent toward such issues as reparations and affirmative
action is that I've grown increasingly weary of blacks placing ourselves in
positions where happiness depends on persuading white folks to "do'' . . .
whatever. I'll be a happy man the day we decide to place as much of our
contentment as possible in our own hands.

But by the same token, I am congenitally unable to pass an absurd contention
unremarked. And the claim that race plays no part in justice is precisely
that.

It's funny: White people often rightly complain that for too many blacks,
everything is about race, always. But they fail to grasp the corollary truth
that for too many whites, nothing is about race, ever.

They are quick to condemn black folks' blind spot. Is it too much to ask
that they display the same readiness toward their own?