ALTHOUGH racist state violence has been a consistent theme in the history of people of African descent in North America, it has become especially noteworthy during the administration of the first African-American president, whose very election was widely interpreted as heralding the advent of a new, post-racial era.
Cameras caught four Minneapolis High School students as they hung a ‘dark-skinned’ baby doll in the hallways of their school in early January.
The act is easily understood as offensive, but the hanging wasn’t the lowest point in the broader story. 
What is worse than a dark-skinned baby doll being hung in a public school?
A student at that same Minneapolis school was quoted by The Huffington Post as saying, “I know the people that did it and I know they didn’t mean it like people have been taking it.
“It was just an idiotic thing.
“They would have done it if it was a purple baby.
“They would have done it if it was a white baby or any colour baby.
“They were just acting on a whim.”
Racism exists in the opinions of individuals around the country.
One may want to believe the civil rights movement and the election of 2008 were the finishing touches on the march into the future from the civil war, but the road signs say we still have some miles to go.
Since Barack Obama’s election in 2008, anti-black attitudes have risen from 48 percent of Americans to 51 percent, according to an Associate Press poll conducted in 2012.
In the four years since the election of America’s first black president, a population roughly the same size as three Phoenix metropolitan areas now harbours newly found anti-black attitudes.
Racial intolerance is often overlooked, especially in predominantly white locales where interaction with racial minorities may be minimal and therefore the opportunities to be overtly racist may be less frequent. 
This ignorance is unacceptable with a country where the status quo for racial minorities is not, and has never been, equalled in general quality and opportunity to the status quo of European-Americans.
“Tis the season to be jolly” goes a popular Christmas tune; however, there is nothing to be jolly about this festive season.
Instead the black community is angry and disheartened over the recent developments where our sons have become moving targets in the streets for law enforcement agencies.
Invoking the familiar names of black men who died at the hands of police, tens of thousands marched throughout the nation on Saturday to protest what they see as rampant racial injustice.
The throngs–young and old, black and white–took to the streets in major cities, including New York, Washington, Boston, San Francisco and Oakland, California.
In Washington, a crowd of thousands snaked up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol in a protest that evoked memories of past civil rights marches.
The crowds appear to represent a burgeoning movement sparked by the decisions of grand juries in Missouri and New York not to indict white police officers in the deaths of two unarmed black men.
The families of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner and other unarmed black men felled by bullets or police force filled a podium in the nation’s capital on Saturday trying to influence the nation’s politicians to do something.
Yet so far, there are few signs such a conversation will come in a place where it might most make a difference?
The next campaign for president.
Most of the current White House prospects have avoided speaking in depth or detail about the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.
From those who have, it only has been only brief, measured responses about a criminal justice system that many African-Americans view as stacked against them.
Republican Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, a former US attorney, has just said he would not second guess a grand jury.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who recently visited Ferguson, Missouri, and has begun to court black voters, blamed Garner’s death on the politicians behind New York’s high cigarette taxes.
New York Republican representative Peter King, who has been teasing a 2016 presidential run, focused on Garner’s obesity as a contributing factor to his death, which happened after Garner was placed in a chokehold by a police officer.
Another potential Republican contender in 2016, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, charged that President Obama was wrong to meet with ‘thugs’ and ‘mob members’ involved in the protests in Ferguson.
The presumed leading Democrat, Hillary Rodham Clinton, said the families and communities deserved a ‘full and fair accounting…We have allowed our criminal justice system to get out of balance and I personally hope that these tragedies give us the opportunity to come together as a nation to find our balance again.”
Clinton and her potential challengers have not set forth a course to do that.
They have given no indication they might join in protests that have reached into popular culture, with NBA and NFL players participating.
Jesse Jackson did make civil rights a central theme of his bids for the Democratic nomination in the 1980s.
Fellow Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama gave major speeches on race during their campaigns.
Not since John F. Kennedy and his successor, Lyndon Johnson, has a party nominee cited civil rights as a reason why voters should elect him.
When all is said and done, the reality is that America is not as colour-blind as it wants to project itself to the world.
As clashes between the outraged black community and police continue, the notion that excessive force can be used by law enforcement agencies is also growing among their ranks as Government does nothing to curtail such heinous practises.
The worst thing about all this is that some time in the near future, President Obama will probably find himself or his grandson at the mercy of a white police officer and the regret will kick in.
Our one chance as black folks to get our foot in the door has most certainly failed us.