JOHN MCWHORTER: Don’t Ignore Race in Christopher Lane’s Murder: The association of young black men with violence doesn’t come out of thin air. “Young black men murder 14 times more than young white men. If the kinds of things I just mentioned were regularly done by whites, it’d be trumpeted as justification for being scared to death of them.”

Related: Minimizing Black Violence and Racism Does Not Help the Black Community. It’s not about helping. It’s about shaping the dialogue in politically convenient ways.

Note, however, that “Conferenceville” isn’t my coinage — it comes from a 1970s Australian novel.