My old college newspaper editor, David R. Dow, op-edizes in the New York Times:

Death Penalty, Still Racist and Arbitrary

Nationwide, blacks and whites are victims of homicide in roughly equal numbers, yet 80 percent of those executed had murdered white people.

Yes, but who perpetrates more homicides? And who gets executed more often? Those facts are the kind of news that's not fit to print, evidently. The simplified model of how it really works is that white-dominated jurisdictions tend to be more conservative and more pro-death penalty, while black-dominated jurisdictions tend to be more liberal and less pro-death penalty. So, people who commit murders in white-dominated jurisdictions (a mix of white and black perps with mostly white victims) are more likely to get the death penalty than people who commit murders in black-dominated jurisdictions (overwhelmingly black perps with mostly black victims).

Since 1976, Texas has carried out 470 executions (well more than a third of the national total of 1,257). You can count on one hand the number of those executions that involved a white murderer and a black victim and you do not need to use your thumb, ring finger, index finger or pinkie.

Whereas, from watching television shows and reading the crime coverage in the New York Times, we know that whites murder blacks all the time, white lacrosse players rape black strippers all the time, 62-year-old white French presidential candidates are "forcing" 5'-10" black hookers to perform improbable acts, etc. (And don't forget all those hot white defendants like Casey Anthony.)

If more whites murdered more blacks, then more whites could be executed for murdering blacks, which would move us closer to racial equality, thus making the death penalty less racist. And that's the really important thing.