Newest piece at National Review: "Obama’s Racial Imbalance: He professes outrage when there’s little evidence of bias against blacks, but ignores attacks on whites."

My newest piece starts this way:

Racism should make people pretty angry. But for that very reason charges of racism should only be leveled carefully. 

George Zimmerman wasn’t motivated by race in confronting Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman, a Hispanic, was himself one-eighth black. The prosecution in his case produced no statements by Zimmerman showing any racial bias. 

Alas, most people didn’t have time to follow the trial’s day-to-day testimony, and obviously didn’t know that. They got summaries presented by the mainstream media. NBC selectively edited a 9-1-1 call to make Zimmerman sound racist. President Obama pronounced the killing as racially motivated, first personalizing the case by comparing Trayvon to a hypothetical son of his, then his younger self, and then suggesting Trayvon was followed because of his race. Naturally, Jesse Jackson claimed the case meant “blacks are under attack.” Martin’s parents surely believed the tragedy was about race. 

Now, race appears central in the recent murder of Australian Christopher Lane in Oklahoma, but the discussion seems to be about almost everything else, especially gun control. . . .

Here is a related shocking statement here by Martin Luther King III, MLK's son:

"However, sadly, the tears of Trayvon Martin's mother and father remind us that, far too frequently, the color of one's skin remains a license to profile, to arrest and to even murder with no regard for the content of one's character," he said, calling for "stand your ground" self-defense laws to be repealed in states where they have been enacted. . . .

Fox News has a related discussion here.

UPDATE: Oklahoma's governor, Mary Fallon, makes an argument that implies that if Obama were to say anything about Trayvon Martin or Christopher Lane case, it should be about the Lane case.

“I think it would be a nice gesture for him to do that, especially since the country of Australia has expressed its sentiments as to the murder itself,” Gov. Mary Fallon (R) said during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. . . .

Jesse Jackson views the Trayvon Martin and Christopher Lane cases as dramatically different.  Jackson would only say the Lane case was one that should be "frowned upon."

During an interview on MSNBC, Jackson was asked whether he thinks that “some on the right are making a false equivalency” between Martin and Lane, a young white baseball player allegedly killed Friday by three black teenagers. 

Yeah,” he said. “They want to connect what happened in the Trayvon Martin case with these three young men on this foolish rampage killing this ballplayer.” 

Jackson said a better comparison was a case in Oklahoma last year when two white men shot five and killed three people in a black community. Jackson said conservatives “seem to have forgotten” about last year’s slayings. 

“That’s really more of an equivalent,” Jackson said. “But there are no winners in any of this sickness.” 

On Thursday, Jackson denounced Lane’s killings in far stronger terms than he did over Twitter on Wednesday, when he was mocked by some on the right for saying the actions of Lane’s killers should be “frowned upon.” . . . 

UPDATE: Others think that race relations have gotten worse.

Asked whether the overall trajectory of race relations has been positive or negative in recent years, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) paused for a moment. 

“Right after the election of the president, I would have thought it was going in a positive direction, but I am not so sure anymore,” she said.  

“I think we have lost ground as it relates to our tolerance of people who are different or people who we believe have not worked hard enough. You hear the language all the time on talk radio — the buzzwords, often primarily directed at low-income people and communities of color.” . . . 

Possibly I should also have mentioned that the Obama administration helped fund anti-Zimmerman demonstrations.