Playing racial games

◼ (S)ix years after America elected the first black president. That history-making moment was supposed to usher in an era of peace in the melting pot. - Michael Goodwin/New York Post

After New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton chose a  black man to replace another  black man as his deputy, a re-  porter asked Mayor de Blasio if the replacement “had to be a person of color.”

“No,” the mayor claimed.

That’s not a little white lie. This is a case where whites need not apply.
Across the land, racially charged disputes are grabbing headlines. Broad swaths of life, including school admissions, crime statistics, income and poverty levels, hiring and firing, are seen increasingly through the prism of skin color and ethnicity.

Race riots, that urban staple of the ’60s and ’70s, are making a comeback. They rattled the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Mo., after a white police ­officer shot a black teenager. More ­violence is expected if, as seems likely, the officer is not indicted.

Desperate to hold onto power, some Democratic candidates spent election season trying to scare black voters to polls. They claimed shootings like the one in Ferguson and the 2012 Trayvon Martin case in Florida would become common if Republicans prevailed. At the bottom of the barrel was the scurrilous comment by Harlem’s Rep. Charlie Rangel that some in the GOP “believe that slavery isn’t over.”

So it goes six years after America elected the first black president. That history-making moment was supposed to usher in an era of peace in the melting pot.


... last week, another NBC exit poll captured the bad news. Only 20 percent said race relations had improved under Obama, while 38 percent say they are worse.

Blacks are especially disappointed. Nearly 60 percent had high hopes in 2008, while only 19 percent now say things are better. A whopping 43 percent say things are worse.

Other polls found an even more lopsided view. A survey for Investor’s Business Daily found that nearly half of all adults think race relations are worse under Obama and 1 in 4 believe they are “much worse.” Only 18 percent say they are better.

While the problems are too entrenched to pinpoint a single source of failure, the president cannot ­escape responsibility.