Nashville News Blog

I had a conversation the other day with Gordon Baum, the CEO of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. You may remember that our own Sheriff Daron Hall gave a talk to the Middle Tennessee chapter of CoCC awhile back and received some flak about it.

Baum denies that his group is about white power or hate, and says that they have "black people and non-whites that are members." He even claims that they have a "Jewish rabbi in New York City," among their membership.

"But we are, and advocate for, whites," says Baum. And here's where his argument gets a bit, um, weird.

He thinks that "the media" ignores blacks who commit crimes because liberals want to coddle them, "in the hopes that they'll behave better."

Baum then gives the example of his home county of St. Charles, Missouri. He says that the population of his county and the neighboring St. Louis County are about the same. The difference is that his county has hardly any blacks (the county is "ninety-seven percent white and the rest are Hispanic or Orientals") and zero murders per year compared with a nearly all black St. Louis with a "murder every other day."

"What's the difference between St. Louis and St. Charles County?" Baum asks. "It's the race."

"Ok," I reply. "But maybe isn't another difference that one county is rich and the other poor? Couldn't that be a reason for the crime?"

"I'm not a sociologist," he says. "...We don't have a solution. We don't have a final solution to this problem."

Thank God for that.