Jamelle Bouie: Why whites support capital punishment

middletownpress.com ^ | 03/31/14 | Jamelle Bouie

[raybbr]

We hear a lot about the racial disparity in death penalty sentencing, namely, that black Americans are dramatically overrepresented on death row.

Less remarked on is the disparity in death penalty support, as revealed in a new Pew Research Center survey. Overall, 55 percent of Americans support capital punishment, and 37 percent are opposed. Among whites, however, support for the death penalty jumps to 63 percent, compared to 40 percent for Hispanics and 36 percent for blacks.

Religion — or at least, Protestantism — seems to increase the divide. At 67 percent in favor, white evangelical Protestants are more likely than any other group to support the death penalty, followed closely by white mainline Protestants (64 percent). Catholics are the least likely among religious whites to support capital punishment, though 59 percent are still in favor. On the other end, religious blacks and Latinos are even less likely than their peers to support the death penalty.

Before we get into why whites are so supportive of the death penalty, it’s important to remember this: There’s no separating capital punishment from its role, in part, as a tool of racial control. As Stuart Banner explores in his book “The Death Penalty: An American History,” one of the earliest American-made capital statutes — as opposed to ones borrowed from England — was passed in New York in the aftermath of a 1712 slave revolt.

[AllAmericanGirl44]

Just chilling to read that, so very sorry for the loss.

Glad the evil *rick is gone.

[muir_redwoods]

My point is that death is pretty irreversible whereas a mistake resulting in a prison sentence could be made “right” with a big payment. I certainly shed no tears when Saddam Hussein was hanged.

[ansel12]

People don’t look at the nature of the murders.

I know that if a black man kills me in a fight in a working man’s bar, or as my drug addicted roommate, that he won’t get the death penalty (and vice versa), but if he comes into my restaurant and murders me in the course of a robbery, or kills my wife at her real estate office, then he might get the death penalty (and vice versa).

People need to look at what the nature and details of the interracial murders were, to compare apples to apples.