Wow. So many racists in this thread already.

Race is relevant when race is the reason the violence happened. Were these people targeted because they were white? Would they still be alive if they were black? Or Hispanic? Or Asian? All signs in this case point to "No" - the violence happened because of a clear and established motive - these people were former co-workers, and race had nothing to do with the attack or their deaths. As such, listing the race in this manner is absolutely race baiting.

Conversely, what about the various killings of black men by (often white) police officers? In this case, clear motive is not always present. In some cases the people who were killed were acting suspiciously, or even violently. But in many, the amount of force used by police officers is disproportionate to what they are responding to, sometimes horrifically so. And lacking any clear motive or rationale (chip on the officer's shoulder, new guy with shitty training, officer knew the guy and wanted him dead), we are left seeking a reason that a supposedly sane cop would take this unreasonable and deadly action.

Many are using this as an opportunity to point out that police reactions to black suspects in encounters are frequently disproportionate to what the officer is responding to. It's kinda' a common theme. And that is outrageous, considering that what it says is that if you're black and you have an encounter with a police officer, you're more likely to be treated harshly or killed.

As I understand it, statistics show that even black officers are prone to being harsher and quicker on the draw against black suspects, so this isn't just a matter of white racism - it's a matter of cop racism. I would argue that the militarization of the police force is largely to blame here, as it encourages a hostile mentality, but there aren't any clear-cut answers here - just a clear problem.

So borne from this is the Black Lives Matter movement, and the recent media outrage (people want to hear it, which means it makes the advertisers happy!), both of which are justified, but seem to be largely about complaining rather than finding a solution.

I would suggest that the solution is to have higher, frequent, consistent accountability for both police as individuals and police departments as a whole to discourage this sort of thing where it can be avoided, paired with audits of training procedures and staff meetings in police departments to ensure that those meetings do not use unnecessarily militaristic approaches where more reasoned and even-handed ones will suffice.

But until we do something to fix the problem, the complaints will continue, and rightly so - this needs to stop. But trying to turn it around by making other things about race when they clearly aren't (such as this unfortunate incident) is clearly cynical and desperate for some way to dismiss this issue rather than address it.