Race relations in Cincinnati have always been tense, and the problem is much more subtle and homely than cops shooting blacks or blacks smashing windows. Cincinnatians have long displayed an alarming tendency to make racism a bigger problem than it really is by promoting race as the source of conflict when it isn't necessary. Too seldom does one acknowledge that the other is simply trying to satisfy his own interests. Too often, one will assume that the other is motivated, above all else, by racial hostility. And it cuts both ways.
Blacks do it as well as whites.
None of this is necessarily anyone's official policy, but it's an insidious sort of racial profiling, the kind of ground-level interaction that creeps unremarkably through the society and stands to be subtly institutionalized in government and business. The trouble precipitating last week's outbreak is so brutally fundamental as to mock larger discussions that couch racial equality in class struggle or economics. Simply put, black folks despair of mounting evidence that their community is under slow burning siege by the Cincinnati Police. We've all seen the statistics. According to the police, seven of the victims were armed with guns, two used cars as weapons against the police, one threatened officers with a brick, one waved a board with nails at officers and one had a knife.