Theo Von Says He’s Not Racist, He’s Just Scared of Black Neighborhoods

Today Theo Von released a conversation with Christopher Curtis, a former Marine and Las Vegas police sergeant who now works as a consultant and public speaker and all-around advocate for policing as an institution. Von, unsurprisingly, offered the perfect audience, gullibly eating up reams of propaganda about Black crime rates and the role of race in policing generally. Curtis spent a long segment defending Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis cop who murdered George Floyd and more recently has become a cause célèbre among right-wingers seeking his  pardon. (“I have yet to see a piece of evidence that Derek Chauvin did that because George Floyd is Black.”) Elsewhere he argued (and Von agreed) that the problem isn’t racism but bias, illustrating this point with a bizarre story about a man he heckled in an airport:

Curtis: It's much more bias than it is racism. I'll give you an example. I was in the Vegas airport. This guy's walking in front of me. His pants are sagging down and you could see his underwear. What was really interesting was it was like this really interesting floral print, and his socks matched his underwear. And I had a beer or two, so I was gonna mess with the guy.

I was walking by. I said, "Oh, man." I said, "Dang, them underwear nice. And they look good with them." And he turned around and he was like, "Who are you talking to like da da da da?" I mean, going off.

And then a TSA agent comes up and is like, "What's the matter?" And he said, "He's talking about my—” And was this is me in civilian clothes. He said, "He's talking about my underwear." And the agent, the TSA agent says, "Well, they do match your socks." And the guy gets pissed off and walks away. Now you could picture this situation happening, right?

Von: Mm-hmm.

Curtis: Now, when you picture the situation happening, did you think it was a Black guy?

Von: I don't know. At first when he said pants sagging, I did.

Curtis: There you go.

Von: But then when you said matching with the—and Black people like to match, so I thought that as well. Floral print. Then I started to think maybe it was like a white guy from maybe Milwaukee or something, or Toledo or something, trying to celebrate.

Curtis: But the point in the story—and it was a Black dude—but the point in the story is that we have biases to behavior. It wasn't because of the person's skin color.

This is characteristic of the broader conversation, in which Curtis (a Black man) effectively argues again and again that racism isn’t a problem in policing, and also, everything you've heard about Black people and crime is correct. Here’s a brief exchange about sex work, for instance:

Von: A lot of the pimps, are they —what types of guys are they? Black men? Are they Asian men?

Curtis: Black men.

Von: It is.

Curtis: Black males are mostly pimps.

Von: So that's more—it's a Black—

Curtis: Yes.

Von: Right. It's a Black culture thing.

Curtis: It is. You didn't know that?

Von: I've seen—I've thought that, because the pimps that I've met—the pimps that I've met, I've only maybe met three pimps, but two and a half of them, or one of them was mixed, but two of them were full, or potentially full Black.

Curtis: But even in rap culture, you can hear people talk about pimp culture.

Von: Oh yeah, pimps and hoes.

Curtis: So it's very clear that that's a subculture of—

Von: I just didn't know if it was also Chinese or Russian type of thing, you know? Do you see a lot of that Vietnamese stuff? Pimps, pimps.

Curtis: In my career, I didn't see that. But in New York, I know that the Russians have a lock on a lot of different vices in New York.

Most revealing to me is the conversation surrounding Chauvin, in which Von pitches his own policy to reduce the appearance of racism in policing: when departments get a call, he proposes, they should send out an officer of the same race as whoever called in. Then he argues that there isn’t as much racism as there used to be, there’s just a fear of Black people, for instances his own fear of Black people:

Von: I don't see as much racism. I grew up in the South. When you'd hear some people's dad, they would just sit there and just say the N-word or and call people [this is bleeped out but he's obviously saying "faggot"] or whatever. And just like they would say a lot of racist jokes. That was it. That was a lot of what you'd hear. But I don't even hear that shit anymore, dude. I'm not saying it doesn't exist.

Curtis: I think people are scared to say it. It's because they're scared they're going to be—

Von: That could be true. But I think more people now, I don't think that there's more racism than there used to be. I think sometimes there is a fear of some Black cultures in areas, because I think people probably want to be safe and they fear that some of those areas don't have a lot of safety. But I don't know that that's true.

Curtis: It's true.

Von: And I also don't know—that kind of bums me out sometimes because it's like, well, I would like to go support more Black-owned businesses and see them in certain areas probably. But I think there's sometimes where I'm just probably afraid. It's like, I don't want to risk my safety today to do that.

Curtis: In a predominantly Black neighborhood?

Von: Right.

Curtis: Yes.

Von: And that may sound racist saying that—

Curtis: That doesn't sound ra—I don't know, why would that sound racist?

To demonstrate that this isn’t racist, Curtis calls up a website that purports to track shootings in Chicago “by race,” demonstrating that Black people in fact do commit more crimes. He blames this, in classic neoliberal fashion, on gangster rap and broken families:

Curtis: Okay, let me speak to the specific question. Why is it that it happens in Black culture? 

Von: Yeah, I mean, I think about, it's like, yeah, well, it starts to seem like, well, that's become part of the culture, and so it's just too risky—I want to—

Curtis: Okay. I think it's part of the subculture. 

Von: Oh, that's a better term. 

Curtis: I think it's part of the subculture. 

Von: Yeah, that's what I mean. That's a better term. Yeah. sometimes I don't know all the words. It's part of the subculture. 

Curtis: It's part of the subculture. And so I'll tell you why it happens, is because not enough people call it out. It's okay for rappers to come and be in places and celebrated when rap culture has become so openly violent, not only towards each other in gang-versus-gang, but towards women. And that is not called out. That's where people who have a voice need to stand up and say, "No, young man, that's not appropriate. That doesn't work." 

When I spoke to you in the beginning, I said, I cannot overstate the importance of my father being in my life. But for that fact, I was able to reach the degree of just basic—and I'm not going to say success. I'm content with what I have. But for me, having both of my parents in my life for such a significant time, a lot of these kids don't, a lot of them do not. 

And the fact that that's not called out, and I don't want to turn this into a political conversation, but I have very strong feelings about the fact that there's so many people in a certain group that don't say, "That is not acceptable behavior. We are not going to condone that. You must act and behave differently otherwise we can't hang here." And until that happens, that's going to just be a continuous cycle. 

Von: Yeah, the media, I mean, you couldn't say that there's a Black crime problem. It's like the media is very—

Curtis: There is a Black crime problem. There is. 

Von: But you can't—yeah, the media seems like they never would say that. And the media is kind of what people absorb. But I think now you're able to have people who have come out of Black culture and are trying—I think there are good leaders out there who are saying it. I think that hopefully it's gonna change too. 

Curtis: The subculture.

Von: Because the shitty part is, it's like, yeah, I had a friend and she had a hat store and she wanted me to come by, and I was like, “I—it's just, that's too—I don't want to be in that area. I don't want be in the area."

Curtis: I don't blame you.

Von: But to be like, I don't want to—it just kind of sucks. Shit like that kind of sucks. 

Curtis: Self-preservation is a thing. 

Von: Right. That's the first thing, and it's the best thing. It's like, I'm not going to fucking risk my life to get fucking fitted. At the same time, it would be nice—it's like, and that's not everywhere, but it's like, yeah, that kind of shit sucks, dude. You wish that shit would go away because it fucking sucks. And it makes cities bad, man. New Orleans has a lot of that murder over there, a lot of Black-on-Black murder, and it makes you not want to be around certain it makes you just not be able to relax and enjoy yourself. 

Curtis: We're at 300 and some people have been shot and there's a mayor who still has a job.

Curtis is referring to Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson at the end there, whom he also complained about earlier in the episode. ("How does a mayor have a job if that many people get shot?") It almost makes one speculate about his own agenda in coming on the show. We need not speculate, though, to see how this interview illustrates what makes Von such a dangerous figure even if he himself seems to be perfectly genial: to put it bluntly, he is a complete idiot and also a racist, and while his tendency to believe whatever the person in front of him is saying may occasionally yield some morally sound opinions, he prefers to hang out with other idiots and racists.

I will leave you with this video of Von committing some white-on-white crime in Nashville a few weeks ago: