This drives me absolutely crazy. Just because a person of one race kills a person of another.....
...does not automatically make it race based.
Listen, what happened to Christopher Lane--the Australian baseball player murdered in Oklahoma--was horrific. It was senseless. It was truly jaw dropping unbelievably terrible. And if the three individuals in custody (two of them black, and the third appears to either be white or mixed race) are in fact those who committed the act, they are psychopaths of the highest degree and do not deserve to see another day in their life outside of prison.
But there's been a reactionary rush in the wake of the George Zimmerman trial--and it's pretty clear that it's coming from those on the right--to label any crime where an African American is accused of murdering a Caucasian as being automatically race based simply on account of the individual's respective races.
They do this, because in their twisted little minds, blacks "got" to get their "cause celebre" with the Trayvon Martin shooting, and because blacks "got" to have their race based case, well then, whites should get to have theirs, too.
It's the same thinking where some white people (and for full disclosure here, I am white) insist there should be a White History Month because there's a Black History Month, or that white people should get to say "n____r" without repercussion because black people can say it.
The murder of Christopher Lane, as tragic as it was, has absolutely nothing in common with the murder of Trayvon Martin. None.
Trayvon Martin's killing was not "race based" simply because George Zimmerman was white (or as some are so quick to smugly point out, Hispanic white) and Tryavon Martin was black. There have been plenty of cases where the perpetrator was white and the victim was black and that in and of itself did not make it race based.
Travyon Martin's killing was race-based because of the specific circumstances surrounding it. A young black male was doing nothing more than walking home from the store. George Zimmerman automatically tagged Trayvon as a criminal "up to no good," and I have no doubt in my mind Trayvon's race played a part in Zimmerman's thought process that horrible night. Zimmerman may not have shot Trayvon because he was black, but I do believe he followed him and initiated the confrontation in part because Trayvon was black.
Some people, mainly white conservatives, were quite uncomfortable with the fact that the Trayvon Martin case gathered national headlines and national discussions. They wanted it relegated as a "local story", or even worse, wanted to deny even the possibility that what Zimmerman did was a criminal act. They did this mainly out of denial of two things. First, a denial that racism in this country still could manifest itself in 2013 in the forms of issues like racial profiling, and that racial profiling isn't just a myth or an acceptable practice. Second, a denial that a so called "good guy with a gun", a legal gun owner with a CCW permit, could act recklessly or with a depraved heart and criminally cause the death of another person with his weapon. In other words, the facts contradict their narrative.
Could the Christopher Lane murder ultimately turn out to be race based? It's possible. Maybe these individuals did set out to murder Lane because he was white. But it's also possible that these three individuals were just plain old psychopaths who singled out Lane for no reason other than the fact they thought he was an easy target.
(Additionally, the Lane killing is much different from the Trayvon killing because it almost immediately gathered national headlines, and the accused were apprehended very quickly and charged. Contrast that to the Trayvon Martin shooting. I didn't personally learn about the Trayvon Martin shooting until nearly two weeks after it happened, and I first learned about it on local South Florida news because he happened to be from Miami. It took another week for it to make national headlines. And George Zimmerman, after a very brief initial detention, for over two months was treated as someone who had been exonerated from even the possibility of wrongdoing, thanks to a seriously messed up law.)
The bottom line is that the facts in this Lane case are still very much unknown and until there's facts that come out that this was a race-based murder, it shouldn't be viewed as such. But that doesn't stop certain people from automatically jumping to conclusions because, let's be honest, they have a racial chip on their shoulder.
Don't believe me? Take a look at this Facebook page entitled "Justice for Christopher" which I noticed a FB friend of mine liking (and which basically started me on this rant). From it's title, it's seemingly innocuous, but it turns out to be anything but:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Justice-for-Christopher/1407815682777258?fref=tck
Look at people's comments, especially in the "Recent Posts by Others" sections. You have people expressing outrage--outrage over what? The accused perpetrators have been arrested and charged and will be tried. You have people obsessing over black on white crime. You even see someone post articles from a white supremacist website.
These are the people who love to throw around the term "race baiting" but they in fact are the true race baiters here.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Well written Tommy - very very well written!
Whites are the dominant culture and ruling class. It's a fishbowl for observation for those not in the dominant culture.
He's outside of the fishbowl - as marginalized as the WHITE man who opened fire on a UU Church in TN a few years ago. Powerless.
His only power was his gun. His rage. His anger.
Blacks - we are only about 12%. You can't assume all minority racial groups think exactly the same. I.E. That's why blacks are bigots to Mexicans, Mexicans are bigots to Koreans, etc. etc. That 51% is not monolithic.
Oh - and I could care less about what a bunch of criminals do to each other in prison! 
The three teenagers did not commit this crime from within prison. Somehow - they got ahold of a gun. So far as I know - it was a legal purchase - correct?
They had the absolute right (per 2nd Amendment Advocates) to own that gun regardless of their racial hatred.
I need to hear/read one testify that the person who pulled the trigger said, "I hate these white punks and they always get away with running while white and I'm gonna get this one" - then I will believe the sole intent and person of this young man being murdered in cold blood with a Gun was based on his skin color.
He still would have been found innocent.
He never made racial statements specifically towards Trayvon Martin.
I was being tongue in cheek - very often as a black American we hear "Once in the third grade I sat next to a black little boy for two weeks so I'm not a bigot towards black Americans and as a matter of fact that makes me an absolute expert on the Black American Experience."
It was for the benefit of a few people who I know read my posts and share my life experience.
but when a black person kills a white person, everybody says "lets not jump to conclusions.
For example, everybody jumped to the conclusion that Zimmerman was based on racism, because it had to be with a white guy killing a Hispanic (including most likely the OP), but when a black guys post on twitter "90% of white ppl are nasty. #HATE THEM." or "“Ayeee I knocced out 5 woods since Zimmerman court!
” we have to pretend it is not racially based.