There's no real trade-off between racism and statism involved in this scandal.

As far as I can tell, pretty much all of the nastiest things that were written about black people in the early-90s newsletter articles were said in the context of articles directly calling for more aggressive and violent police tactics. Or, sometimes, directly making excuses for actual acts of police brutality--among them the police beating of Rodney King (that was in the same article as the crack about the welfare checks, and also the line that about 95% of Black men in D.C. could be considered "semi-criminal or entirely criminal," whatever that means).

So what we've actually got, in the case in question, is both racism and violent statism wrapped up in one vile package.