Society values white lives more than black lives. This is clear from the fact that killers of whites are much more likely to be sentenced to death than killers of blacks. Of the 1,788 people currently on death row, 1,713 were convicted of killing a white person. Yet blacks are six times more likely to be murder victims than whites are. In Florida, no one has ever been executed for murdering a black person, but dozens have been executed for murdering white people.

The following arguments were abstracted from newspaper articles, editorials, and letters to the editor. Use the method presented in this section to construct argument patterns. If a statement is redundant or plays no role in the argument, do not include it in the pattern.