Regarding the Times’ headline and story, I was trying to wax poetically, succinctly — comments are limited to 1,500 characters — when I should have just hit the nail on the head: American racism, bigotry, xenophobia have always kept the door open for the use of any tool, technique, idea, policy, nor matter how preposterous, to cover up realities of race and ethnicity in America.

Check out this reading. There are lots more like it — like Drapetomania!!!

Can you believe it: The lawyers for Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer convicted last month of the torture murder of George Floyd, invoked The Sickle Cell Trait, saying that the condition played a role in Floyd’s death.

Expect the cops to be out in force this day?

When they carried the body of a 32-year-old Black man named Lamont Perry out of the woods in Wadesboro, N.C., there were no protests over his sudden death in police custody. No reporters camped at the scene. No lawyers filed suit.

Instead, the final mark in the ledger of Mr. Perry’s life was made by a state medical examiner who attributed his death in large part to sickle cell trait, a genetic characteristic that overwhelmingly occurs in Black people. The official word was that he had died by accident.