Our leftist-dominated media establishment means that if a black person figures in a story as a victim, it becomes headline news.  This is true whether the story is ridiculous or tragically serious.  The message is that America is racist, but the data suggest that it's Democrat-run cities that are racist.

The latest unserious racial story involves Amy Cooper, a white woman in New York's Central Park, who called 911 because she felt threatened by Christian Cooper, a black man who was bird-watching.  Amy had her dog off-leash, violating both park rules and good citizenship, and refused Christian's request to leash her dog.

According to his Facebook post, Christian told Amy, "Look, if you're going to do what you want, I'm going to do what I want, but you're not going to like it."  Christian explained later what he meant:

Christian Cooper said he then pulled out dog treats. He told CNN he keeps dog treats with him to get dog owners to put their dogs on leashes because, in his experience, dog owners hate when a stranger feeds their dog treats and immediately restrain their dogs afterward.

Amy, however, thought Christian was threatening her, so she called 911, which is when Christian started recording her.

Amy Cooper, a racist white woman, called police on Christian Cooper, a Black man, and lied that he was threatening her life.

Her ‘apology:’ "I'm not a racist. I did not mean to harm that man... I think I was just scared.”

You knew what you were doing, you lying. racist, trash. pic.twitter.com/UYoQCmgAor

— Bishop Talbert Swan (@TalbertSwan) May 26, 2020

In a less racially obsessed world, the police should have scolded Amy and maybe written her a ticket for wasting their time.  (Her dog handling skills needed attention too.)  She also owed Christian a huge, sincere apology.

What happened instead is that the story went viral, everyone was talking about racism, and Amy lost her job.  The fact that a local story about a neurotic woman and a misunderstanding went viral is a sad indictment of our media and our culture.

The other race-based story isn't unserious; it's dreadful.  Four Minneapolis police officers were involved in an arrest that killed George Floyd, an unarmed black man.  A video shows one of the police officers with his knee on Floyd's neck for seven minutes, as Floyd repeatedly says that he can't breathe and cries for his mother.  It is very disturbing.

It is impossible to tell whether the officer's brutality was because Floyd was black, resisting arrest, in the hands of a sadist, or a combination of those things.  Whatever the reason, the racial aspect meant the that media elevated a local scandal to a national symbol of alleged American racism.

The media's obsession means there have been many national symbols of "American racism" over the past few years.  What stands out about them is how often they occur in leftist enclaves:

• Michael Brown, whose death in 2014 started the Black Lives Matter movement, died in Ferguson, Missouri, a Democrat-run city in a Democrat county.  (Also, considering that he was trying to grab a police officer's gun, he was more sinning than sinned against.)
• Eric Garner died in 2014 when a New York City Police Department officer put him in a chokehold.  New York is a Democrat-run city in a Democrat-run state.
• Freddie Gray died in 2015 in police custody in Baltimore, a Democrat-run city in a Democrat-run state.
• Stephon Clark died in 2018 in Sacramento, California, a Democrat-run city in a Democrat-run state.
• George Floyd just died in Minneapolis, a Democrat-run city in a Democrat-run state.
• Amy Cooper, who called 911 on Christian Cooper, is a leftist in New York City.

If you go to Wikipedia's Black Lives Matter page, you'll see that, in addition to the five police-caused deaths described above, other notable police-involved deaths from 2014 through 2017 that inspired BLM rage also occurred in Democrat-run cities:

• Los Angeles
• New York
• Cleveland
• Milwaukee
• Dearborn Heights
• Madison
• Oxnard
• Portsmouth, Virginia
• Cincinnati
• Wilmington, Delaware
• Minneapolis
• Detroit
• Chicago
• North Charleston, South Carolina
• Charleston, South Carolina
• Baton Rouge
• Falcon Heights, Minnesota
• Sacramento
• Charlotte, North Carolina
• San Francisco
• Salt Lake City
• Baltimore
• Pittsburgh
• Nashville

In that same period, BLM focused on only six police-caused deaths in Republican-run cities:

• Beavercreek, Ohio
• Chamblee, Georgia
• Tulsa
• Stonewall, Mississippi
• Palm Beach Gardens, Florida
• El Cajon, California

Thus, during the 2014–2018 time period, blacks were at a 300% greater risk from police in Democrat enclaves than in Republican ones.

Whether something is ridiculous or tragic, if a black person is on the downside of an event, the media nationalize and shill it.  They do this to show that America is a racist place and, since 2016, to emphasize that Trump is the king of American racism.

Things look different, though, when you use the Black Lives Matter movement as a marker identifying deadly racist incidents in America for the last two years of Obama's presidency and the first two years of Trump's.  That's when you discover that the most dangerous place for a black person to be is in a city or town that votes for Democrat politicians.