Diverse-City Low card wins BY SHAY STEWART-BOULEY

Over the years, I’ve discovered the quickest way to make many white people squirm (not that I usually desire this, mind you) is to bring up race relations. And to truly raise the blood pressure, playing the race card is generally a sure bet.

If you don’t know, "playing the race card" is when minorities bring up their race as the reason for being treated unfairly in a situation, often based on historically poor treatment. Blacks are probably perceived as playing this hand more often than anyone else, though I can’t say for sure whether that’s true — and I’m black. Sometimes, playing the race card is a valid move; sometimes, it’s pure nonsense.

One of the more spectacular examples was a decade back at O.J. Simpson’s murder trial. Frankly, O.J. hadn’t seemed very black for a long time, but the race card certainly saved his ass in that high-stakes game.

Closer to home and in the present day, we have another murder trial in which the race card got pulled from the deck. In this case, it was Brandon Mills’s trial for the fall 2004 killing of Jarmaine Ramirez.

If you’ve forgotten, Mills, who is black, was walking down Congress Street last fall when he was hit by some water tossed out an upper-story window as an apparent prank. Mills allegedly became incensed, went home to get his brother, and then went back to the apartment building. He forced his way into the unit where 16-year-old Ramirez, who was white, lived with his family. It’s not even clear if Ramirez had anything to do with the water, but regardless, being hit with water is still a senseless reason to murder someone.

Mills’s defense attorney was reported as saying race was a factor in the treatment that his client received after the murder. The way I view it, race didn’t matter in this situation at all. After all, Mills’s brother Antwane, who originally was charged with murder as well, got off pleading guilty to burglary and assault. No, the race card is the wrong play of the hand here. This is a situation in which a hair-trigger temper led someone down the wrong path. But in an overwhelmingly white state such as Maine and an increasingly diverse city such as Portland, I can only imagine that any talk of race being a factor is uncomfortable.

So, the jury found Mills guilty of a lesser charge of manslaughter, apparently willing to believe that he didn’t intentionally go back to the apartment with the intent to kill anyone. Well, it seems to me he went back with the intent to do something pretty nasty if he went all the way home to get his brother and a weapon. Regardless, now that he faces up to 30 years in the clink, he will have some time to think about a situation he should have thought about before he got into it.

This case has captivated me because it highlights just how uncomfortable we as a nation are in bringing up issues of race. This helps leave the doors open for people to use race as a diversionary tactic when it’s inappropriate. Certainly, the media did its part to play up race by repeatedly reporting that Mills came to Maine from the inner city of Boston. By the same token, Mills’s defense attorney played up race to help get his client free of a potential life sentence.

In the end, though, the race card here leads to a losing hand for everyone at the table. The Mills family must face the awful realization of an incarcerated young man from their own ranks. The Ramirez family must suffer the loss of a child who will never come home. It wasn’t the race card we needed here. It was the Fool card from a Tarot deck. Because if ever there was a senseless, unnecessary killing, this one was it.

Shay Stewart-Bouley can be reached at shaybouley@msn.com