In a December 6, 2025 USA Today newspaper article entitled "Why Tookie Williams Deserves Clemency," the very real topic of race came up. Not many mainstream media outlets have the heart, the guts, or the balls to speak truthfully about America's dirty little truth.
That race does matter in the death penalty, especially when the victim is white and the defendant is black. Did you know, or care to know, that here in America, which boasts throughout the world about its fairness and first class justice system, that all but 25 of the 570 whites executed through October 1, 2025 had white victims, as did 62 percent of the blacks who were put to death?
Did you know or care to know that here in America being convicted of killing someone white is far more likely to land a person on death row than being convicted of murdering a black person? While black people were nearly 47 percent of this nation's homicide victims from 1976 to 2002, 80 percent of the victims of the people on death row were white. This is according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Why is this a reality in a country that says all of its people, its citizens, are equal? While there are most certainly many different reasons for this reality, one of them has to be this: the people who are elected and make the laws in this country and put the judges on the bench to enforce these laws are always rich white men! This historical truth cannot be denied. And like most people throughout the history of this world, these rich white men look out for their own kind to the detriment of others. Especially black people in general, and black men in particular!
So when I speak this truth, that throughout the history of America, rich white men's justice has always been poor black men's grief when it comes to most things, and especially who lives and who dies, I am not lying!
This is not just a historical fact, it's a modern day fact, and the statistics speak to this. These are not my statistics. These are the white people's statistics, the people who study this. Nevertheless it doesn't appear that these truths aren't having any effect on who lives and who dies within this country's death chambers. If history is our guide, then we know that one day this will come to an end. But the question must be asked, how many more people will die before we end this unjust and unfair system in this country?
In Struggle
From Death Row
At San Quentin Prison
Kevin Cooper