1/2/2006
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
The Huffington Post

This is not a bad case of racial paranoia run amok. Blacks have been taunted, harassed, beaten and shot at in this community. But the tragic murder of a 14-year-old black girl and the wounding of two other young blacks in the forbidden zone sparked anguish, rage, and finally drew some local media attention. The murder drew gasps of disbelieve that in America in 2007 in a big, Northern cosmopolitan city, with a Latino mayor, and that routinely back pats itself for its ethnic diversity, there is an entire area that blacks are banned from on pain of injury or death at the hands of other non-whites. And city officials seem powerless to do anything about it.

Though two reputed Latino gang members are charged with the teen's murder, and were slapped with a hate crime charge, the arrest and the hate charge didn't calm the jitters and fears of blacks that live there. Even after the arrests, a number of blacks still said that they planned to get out of the area as soon as they could.

There is no shortage of hate in the world.

And a serious shortage of wisdom in dealing with it.