San­ford. And Son.

I didn’t intend to write another Trayvon Mar­tin arti­cle. Really. Once I had the time­line done, I hadn’t planned on say­ing any­thing more.

But yesterday’s news about the shoot­ing of five African-​​Americans by a Cau­casian man in Tulsa, Okla­homa, led me to con­sider how often our news is cast from a racial perspective.

It didn’t take long after the Mar­tin shoot­ing became national news for the story to become focused on racism. And once a story becomes a “racism” story, par­tic­u­larly when it involves a (half) Cau­casian shooter and an African-​​American with a bul­let to the chest, it starts to take on shades of “Ku Klux Klan hang­ings” on one side, and shades of “Tawana Braw­ley hoax” on the other.

These car­i­ca­tures become an insid­i­ous form of reduc­tio ad absur­dum. (more…)