DOG TRAINER CONTINUES ITS QUEST TO POLARIZE L.A. COUNTY ON RACE ISSUES: Even the liberal wife of Patterico was annoyed by a story in our local Dog Trainer about a white guy arrested for killing the sister of the tennis-playing Williams sisters (Venus and Serena). The headline reads Race of Compton Suspect Startles Police.

Goodness gracious, we have some racist police in Southern California! They catch a killer, he turns out to be white, and they are “startled”!

Well, it’s not quite that simple. As Mrs. Patterico observed, what really surprised police is that a white guy was a member of the Crips — a traditionally black gang which typically excludes members of other races. Not quite the tale of racism promised by the Dog Trainer’s headline, huh?

As the body of the article explains, “a white associate of the Crips is so unusual in Compton that seasoned investigators did double takes.” Not only are white residents rare in Compton, which is overwhelmingly black and Hispanic (about 1% of the population is white), but white gang members are even more rare. This might surprise you, but gang members aren’t the most racially tolerant folks on the planet. Not only do they tend not to admit people of other races as members, they tend to kill people of other races. When whites do join minority gangs, they tend to be Latino gangs:

The racial makeup of Los Angeles County street gangs is reinforced by the culture of prisons, in which inmates commonly divide themselves along color lines, [Sheriff's Dept. Captain Cecil] Rhambo said — blacks with blacks, Latinos with Latinos. When whites enter the mix on the streets, Rhambo said, it’s more common to see them join Latino gangs.

Another captain in the Sheriff’s Department, Frank Merriman, echoed the sentiment. “[Merriman] said he knew of only one other case in his 35-year career in which a non-Latino white had been linked in this way to a black gang.”

So the real headline should have been: “Police Surprised That Racist Black Gang in Compton Allowed White Guy as Member.” But that headline would not inflame any racial tension — so where’s the fun in that?