Post-Racial Era My Patootie

So here we are, in a brand new year with a brand new President who (relative to his 43 predecessors) has a brand new heritage. With Obama's candidacy/election/inauguration comes this belief that we as a nation have somehow adopted a brand new mindset regarding race.

I beg to differ.

On January 1, 2009, just 19 days before our post-racial President was sworn into office, a young unarmed man named Oscar Grant was murdered by a police officer in Oakland, California. This particular young man just happened to be in handcuffs, lying on his stomach on the platform at the time. This young man was shot in the back in front of a BART train (their version of the subway) full of people, many of whom were recording the execution with their mobile phones.

I know what you're thinking: "Why haven't I heard anything about this?" or perhaps "Don't you mean New York City? That kind of thing always happens there." Even New York's new senator, the one replacing Hillary Clinton, has opined that the Grant murder looks like a crime. Yet the officer has resigned from the police force and was granted bail as opposed to being held without it. One of my friends suggested, "Maybe this happens so often it's not really news." Clearly I'm troubled by this prospect, but he may be right.

When will we start holding our cops to a higher standard? The punishment for a citizen who commits a crime against a cop is much more stringent than if that same crime were committed against another citizen. Yet, cops aren't held to an elevated standard in the way they treat the rest of us. Or at least, some of the rest of us. So often (this case included) the officers claim that the shooting was "accidental." Why is it that the victims of all these accidents always have skin color in common? Doesn't sound very post-racial to me.

The New York Times had an article last year that described the "accidental" shootings and brutality episodes for the NYPD going back several decades (so I can't even blame it all on Giuliani) and with perhaps one exception, they were all of African descent.

So we'll see what happens in the Grant case, and whether his killer -- a man whose salary Grant's tax dollars paid -- is brought to justice. Stay tuned.