alice sue martin was white and blonde and a former beauty contestant and had majored in journalism and had her own talk show. the ratings for the show were not as good as they might be, so she resolved on desperate measures.
she decided to have guests on her show who were not sympathetic to her and her audience’s basically right-wing agenda.
it did not go well. she had a difficult time finding guests who were antipathetic to her who were willing to go on the show, and who were also well known enough that her audience would have any idea who they were. and people with books to promote usually had little interest in appearing before an audience that was extremely unlikely to buy the books.
she invited a variety of little known persons espousing feminism and abortion rights, gay rights, prisoners’ rights, opposition to the death penalty, curbs on the police, efforts to combat climate change, abolition of the electoral college, and other social justice causes.
neither alice sue nor the guests said anything on any of these subjects, that had not been said a billion times before.
one day her guest was a young african-american man named jeremiah miller, who had written a book about the practices of the police forces patrolling the inner cities. several chapters of his book concerned cases in which unarmed black persons had been shot and killed by white policepersons. some of the cases had received wide coverage in the national press, others not so much.
after the preliminaries, in which mr miller was introduced to the audience, alice began by quoting statistics that showed that large numbers of white persons were also shot and killed by the police. she asked jeremiah miller if he disputed the statistics.
i do not know if they are true or not, he replied. but even if you accept them as true, they still show more than twice as many black people, by percentage of population, are killed by the police.
but if you make adjustment for economic status, alice sue retorted, the statistics even out. white people of the same average economic status as black people are killed by the police at the same rate.
but if you start adjusting statistics, you can prove anything, he replied. anything at all about anything.
alice sue could feel the studio audience getting bored, and knew the tv and streaming audience must be getting bored too. she had made the mistake again of talking about statistics! she decided to shift away from them.
tell me, mr miller. she asked, what do you think the chances are, that you - you, yourself - will be shot and killed by a police officer?
i would say they were pretty good.
really? alice sue had memorized some statistics about the actual percentage of black people killed by police in america every year. something like 370 police killings a year in a black population of about 37 million. she decided to try statistics one more time - but the actual percentages show your chances of being killed in a given year are about 1 in 100,000. if you adjust for your being a grown man and not a woman or a child they would still be about 1 in 40,000.
yes, but if i live for forty years it drops to 1 in 1,000. if i live longer it drops into 1 in 3 digits. how comfortable is that? besides - jeremiah miller for the first time started to seem a little agitated - the police do in fact shoot black children and women, so where are your statistics then? and, anyway, it is not just the numbers, it is that the police are not held accountable -
that is not true, alice sue tried to interrupt - there have been several cases -
and it isn’t just police, it is any white person, any white person can kill a black person and get off.
well, maybe some white people have gotten off - but they still had to go to trial -
for the first time, jeremiah miller laughed. had to go to trial! hell, if people could do anything - like rob banks - and just have to go to trial, you think you wouldn’t do it?
tell me, mr miller, do you think if i shot you right here - right here right now on television, with mill- with thousands of people watching, do you think anything would happen to me?
i can just about guarantee that it would not.
really? and how would that work? alice sue could feel the audience on her side, and getting interested now.
just plead insanity or some such. or that you were afraid - that will work just about every time.
you think? suppose i were to say, right here on tv, that i am perfectly sane and in my right mind, and that i was not afraid, and i was shooting you just because i am an evil hate-filled racist who hates all black people. would i get off then?
probably. you might not even get arrested.
well then, let’s find out, shall we? alice sue was wearing a loose fitting blouse and skirt and was sitting directly facing jeremiah miller with only about seven feet separating them. she reached into the blouse and pulled out a small pistol and shot jeremiah miller in the chest and heart three times, killing him instantly.
- 2022
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