You answered your own question.  By framing the story around his race people, as demonstrated by yourself, will concentrate only on race and ignore all of the other circumstances of the story.  As if this story is somehow more tragic because he was a black guy.  Nowhere did I ever say that racism never existed in this country.  Stop putting words in peoples mouths and taking things out of context in order to distract the issue.  Racism surely is a part of this country's history and will continue to be a part of it until people like you stop making race the crux of every argument or issue.  I think your job this morning should be to tell us why you want to be part of the problem and not part of a solution.