bLACK sHOOTER KILLS TWO OFFICERS, SELF

     In the comment section of the articles I've read about this incident, the sentiment has been mostly complaining that the articles do not mention the shooter was a African-American  and complaining that if the shooter had been white that being white would have been the central focus of the article. 
   When I was a college student in Huntsville, Texas I worked for the local newspaper.  One day the paper published a story about a young boy that was struck by a car and killed when he was out riding his bicycle.  The article mentioned that the boy was a black kid.  As it turned out there were two kids the same age with the same name and the one killed was not the black one but the white one.  Of course the parents were upset that the paper misidentified their child.  From that time on the policy became to never mention a person's race unless it was crucial to the article.  I've adopted the same
philosophy for my own speech.  I hear so many people tell an innocent story and if it involves a person of color that fact is always mentioned no matter if  what the person did was good, bad, or indifferent.  I now always leave the race part out.  What difference does it make?
   It is true that when one drives through neighborhoods at night that in predominately black neighborhoods one will see people standing around while one seldom sees this in white neighborhoods.  Seeing this makes one think that everyone in the neighborhood is a thug but if one were to travel overseas and drive through poor villages late at night one would see much the same thing.  This behavior is indicative of boredom with fewer social activities and not ones character. 
  I also realize that where there are young people gathered together with not much to do the likelihood of those young people to commit a crime increases but that is due to boredom and the mob mentality
rather than then color of ones skin.  The truth is that there is very little difference between the races besides the color of our skins.  That should be seen as a distinguishing s characteristic and not a defining one.