Tucker Carlson of Fox News made a recent appearance on the show "Hannity" to backtrack off his comments last week about how he felt that Michael Vick should have been executed for his Dogfighting conviction.

"This is what happens when you get too emotional," Carlson said. "I'm a dog lover, I love them and...I know a lot about what Michael Vick did...I overspoke. I'm uncomfortable with the death penalty in any circumstance. Of course I don't think he should be executed, but I do think that what he did is truly appalling."

It appears that the heat got too hot for Carlson after the nation expressed outrage at the insensitivity of his comments. But the notion that this conservative attempted to argue that Vick should have been killed for his crime speaks to the perceptions that many conservatives have of both black men and black male athletes. Our prison system is full of African American men who've been either wrongly accused of charges that they could not afford to fight, or excessively sentenced by a prison system that is out of control (for example, the black power advocate in Texas who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for passing a joint to an undercover officer) . The recent release of Cornelius Dupree, a man who spent 30 years in prison on a wrongful conviction, speaks to the seriousness and danger of men like Tucker Carlson. Carlson's comments reflect the very same mindset that leads to judges giving black men longer sentences when they commit the same crimes as whites. The bottom line is that we are executed more readily than others because our lives are deemed to be less valuable.

Rather than writing off Carlson's comments as a simple slip of the tongue, deeper reflection must be done to understand the nature of his racially-charged Freudian slip. The truth is that Carlson's words reflected the sentiment of millions of Americans, and his words are not disconnected from the abuses that occur in our criminal justice system at large. If we don't dig to the root of the issue and allow it to be dismissed with a simple pseudo-apology, we miss the chance to truly understand our problem.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and the "Never Going Back" initiative to challenge mass incarceration. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.