The last couple of days have been…. interesting.  An article I wrote in the wake of the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict, regarding acknowledging concerns about the criminal justice system, was met with a flood of hate that I have never before seen here at RedState.  This prompted me to write a follow-up addressing the accusation that trying to talk to white people as a white person was somehow, unexplainably, racist.  I want to take a moment to thank the people who not only got the piece but more importantly, those who disagreed with it and did so respectfully.  I don’t expect every opinion piece I write here to be hailed as amazing content.

Of the biggest things people hated about the first piece was, in particular, this statement:

“However, calling Rittenhouse a “white supremacist” or suggesting that this verdict had anything to do with race, is an absolute lie.  This verdict did not.  Certainly, this feels like justice to us, but we can understand why this may feel like an injustice to others.  As we watched the trial, we all knew this was going to be the result, but had Kyle been black and faced the challenges that young black men in our judicial system face, first, he would have likely never raised the money to afford the defense that Kyle had, and second, never received the level of support from conservatives that Kyle did.”

Despite the litany of examples that support that statement, I was told that I was racist for even suggesting such a thing.  I get that people want to think they would have acted the same if it had been a young black kid instead of Kyle, but our record as conservatives isn’t stellar when it comes to this.  If you think, however, I am alone in my assessment you are about to be very disappointed and some of you may be changing your views of just how not-racist Kyle Rittenhouse is.

“I believe there needs to be change, I believe there’s a lot of prosecutorial misconduct not just in my case but in other cases and, uh, it is just amazing to see how much a prosecutor can take advantage of somebody.  If they did this to me, imagine what they could have done to a person of color, who doesn’t maybe have the resources I do or is not widely publicized like my case.”

I will tell you exactly why Kyle thinks this way:  Kyle has been “inside” the criminal justice system.  He has seen firsthand the guys who are victims of this system, who don’t have the resources to hire an attorney worth their salt to defend them against bogus charges, let alone legitimate ones.  To admit that, doesn’t require that you hang a sign labeling you a racist around your neck for not being aware of it.  What it does say, though, is that when people who do have that experience tell you it is a problem, the last thing it needs to be met with is some whataboutism that you believe proves it isn’t.  It is counterproductive.

Kyle is right.  Had this been a person of color (see: minority) you likely would have never heard of this case.  That’s not because it wouldn’t have made the news, it just would have been a mention for a day or two and everyone would have moved on.  It is because the left was able to mobilize that miscreants of misinformation (see: media) to spin this case about race, that we even heard what we heard about this case.   Had it been a black kid killing white people, this idea he would have never been arrested is conjecture.  Had it been a black kid killing black people, you could almost guarantee you would have never heard of this case. Hell, if there wasn’t a video of an AR-15 involved, it might not have even made national news.  We all got dragged into the narrative fight, myself included.

Is Rittenhouse saying the system likely would have acted differently upon a person of color, racist?  Race-baiting?  Woke nonsense? Of course not.  It is reality.  A reality, mind you, that we will be better off for acknowledging, and one that we can change so the left can’t weaponize it against us anymore.