My first thought when looking at the 170+ mug shots of the bikers arrested in the Waco shootout was, “When are we going to hear the first complaint about how racist those bikers are? I mean, there’s not a black face in the bunch!” (But there were a lot of “white Hispanics,” and it reminded me of the pictures of Organizing for America staffers!) Instead, the first complaint relating to race is how “different” this story has been reported in comparison to Ferguson or Baltimore. Apparently the media should be wrangling into the story “white on white crime,” and blaming the lack of fathers in white families or the breakdown of the white family for this massacre.

Well, how ‘bout let’s compare apples to apples. What happened in Ferguson and Baltimore and a few other places? White police officers (primarily) or police officers generally were criticized for brutalizing young black men who resisted arrest. Then without waiting for facts to be determined, race-baiters flourished and blacks rioted and other people’s property was destroyed. The chaos, we are told, was in response to historical discrimination – there was no room in the discussion for anything other than discrimination being the root cause of the incendiary incidents. It was the people causing the damage that implicated race as the reason for their actions. Therefore, hey, let’s talk about race.

And we did, and continue to do so, but it’s really not going anywhere and things are only getting worse. It’s because we are not talking about it honestly and acknowledging the root cause of the overwhelming poverty and extremely high rate of single parent households in the black family. Those things have come about not because black people decided to become poor and fatherless. It is a direct result of the Great Society – the expansion of government into their lives which created disincentives for families to remain intact and disrupted the economical balance of an entire group of people. The same problems apply to other groups in poverty also, but there is no denying that black society has suffered the most visible consequences. It is not systematic discrimination that has allowed crime to flourish in these communities; it is the policy of low expectations that is the culprit.

Now, what happened in Waco? A huge number of bikers (and sorry I’m not using thugs to describe them, but doesn’t biker already conjure up a negative image? If they ditch their bikes, then I’ll start calling them thugs), descended on a little Texas shopping mall to supposedly talk about making friends. Ha! They were trying to shore up allegiances and agree to territories for their criminal activities! Somebody kicked the wrong somebody’s bike tires and all hell broke loose (it is reported that the fight was started because somebody’s foot got run over). All nine killed were bikers. No major property damage was reported. Police involvement was minimal, and police actions were not a cause of the incident not did they contribute to this private fight.

The shootout was not about race, and there is no racial element to this story. The Bandidos are named after the Mexican bandits who lived by their own rules. They are white and Hispanic. The Cossacks and Scimitars are Caucasian. The other biker gangs have not been named, but it doesn’t look like the Mongols (mostly Hispanic) were involved in this brawl. There are no major biker gangs who are black, but there are black biker gangs like Hell’s Lovers and Sin City Deciples – they just don’t make the worst of the worst list. Look, they were trying to place nice and things just got out of hand, but it wasn’t because one is white and the other is brown. It was because those groups of people don’t possess great mediation skills.

The Waco shootout is about a bunch of white, mostly hairy, people who live on the margins of society by choice who decided to shoot it out with each other. Does that deserve to be plugged into a racial narrative? No white race-baiters were on the scene to stir stuff up, maybe they missed an opportunity? When large groups of whites engage in group violence on this scale do they specifically cite race as the reason they are doing it? If so, that might be a proper comparison. Criticizing the reporting of this story for not making the narrative about race is just ridiculous.

Does black crime deserve to be painted with a broad stroke? Why can’t black criminals just be criminals without always resorting to the black on black crime rate or blaming the epidemic of single mothers? The problem with this argument is that when “black on black crime” is brought up it is as a response to those who seek to excuse the black criminal for his behavior. No one should be excused for the criminal choices that they make, but there is something to the idea that those choices may involve more complexity because of circumstances in the black community. Violence there is higher in comparison to anything you’d find in white communities. It is therefore a legitimate topic to discuss, not in an effort to find blame, but in an effort to correct the root cause.

In Waco, those killed were aged 27 to 65. Those arrested aged from 21 to 65 probably averaging around late 30s to 40s. Is it really appropriate to talk about their mamas? Surely, the drive to join a gang comes from a desire to find a family, but that’s not exclusive to biker gangs. Most of them probably did not enjoy a good childhood, but humorously, the Bandidos motto is “We are the people our parents warned us about” which points to a way of life chosen despite having some early moral direction. The phenomenon of the biker gang primarily took hold in the days following the Viet Nam war. A lot of disillusioned veterans made up the swelling ranks of the gangs. Their existence and associated criminal activity is not bound up in race or broken families. Their criminality is a choice they made, just as it is a choice that any criminal makes.

Blacks who become criminals also make choices. The commentary on this problem often gets caught up in a simplified sound bite of blaming the perpetrator because of the color of his skin. But it is not the color of his skin that makes him become a criminal; it is first a choice, and it is also the pervasive governmental conditions which have been forced upon his community that contribute to the bad choices he has made. It IS harder to make good choices in situations where everybody is on government assistance, and the only guys that seem to be doing well are the pimps and the drug dealers. That’s why it would be important to have a full in-tact family unit with working parents to provide support and to help youngsters make good choices. If black communities were better places to live, because black on black crime has been reduced, then turning our attention to the by-comparison low rate of racist police brutality would make sense.

Why does the scene of the biker arrests look so calm? Why doesn’t it look like Ferguson or Baltimore? Why didn’t the cops throw the bikers to the ground and rough them up like they supposedly would have done with a black suspect? Did they run out of flex cuffs? The answer is the bikers weren’t rioting, that’s why. No race-baiters were on the scene either. And the biggest difference is that no one seemed to be resisting arrest. The common thread in all the recent cases of death while in police custody has been resisting arrest. Resisting arrest causes force, justifiable or not, to be used against you. If you don’t agree with the arrest take it to court and fight it there, don’t fight the cop.

But let’s focus on the real race issue here – those bikers really need to diversify their membership. I mean, that was one of Jax’ final missions for SOA. If it’s good enough for the Sons, then other OMCs ought to get on board too. And let’s not forget gender discrimination, Women! Where are the women?! They are clearly being shut out from leadership roles as they are not even allowed membership. (To be completely fair, there were two women arrested and two men who may be black. Race is not attributed in the mug shots. So it’s hard to know how they “identify.”)

Can we just be consistent here? When bikers go around and start blaming their shootouts on white privilege, then it will be time to start talking about white on white crime.