Very early Saturday morning on the rooftop of 385 Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, 19-year-old Timothy Stansbury, Jr. and his friend Terrence Fisher were returning from a child's birthday party. When they used the rooftop doorway to enter the building - they encountered two uniformed housing officers who were doing routine rooftop patrols of the Louis Armstrong Houses. At some point during the encounter, 35-year-old Police Officer Richard Neri, a nearly 12-year veteran of the force who has never fired his gun in the line of duty - raised his weapon, which was already in his hand, pointed it at Stansbury - and opened fire - killing him.

After a preliminary investigation of the incident, which is still ongoing, the NYPD is calling the shooting "unjustified" and "a tragedy" - while some prominent members of New York City's African-American community is calling the shooting "racist."

At a makeshift shrine in front if the building where the shooting took place, someone left a handwritten note next to a picture of Stansbury that said, "Innocent Black Man Killed By Racist NYPD White Terrorists. Enough Is Enough! Black Cops, Black Neighborhoods - White Cops, White Neighborhoods." And, when the New York Post asked Phyllis Clayburne, Stansbury's mother, how she feels about police officers, she said, "They keep killing us like we're dogs out here. Are we better off now than we were 200, 300 years ago?"

Is this ever going to stop?

It drives me completely insane when an incident in this City is turned into a racially motivated crime. Be it a murder, a traffic accident - or an unjustified police shooting - why is it that whenever an African-American loses his life at the hands of a white person - it is seen as an on-purpose racial murder?

You know what? Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream - and now I have a dream too.

My dream is that the next time an African-American is killed in New York City by a white person, regardless of the circumstances surrounding their death - it is seen as what it really is - and not turned into a racial incident. We all have a responsibility to ensure that everyone in this great City is treated equally and not discriminated against. We also have a responsibility to not, for lack of a better word - "promote" racism by wrongfully labeling tragic incidents as racially motivated and branding people racists because of their actions - no matter if those actions were accidental or otherwise. It is bad enough that racism exists and racial incidents occur - but screaming racism where none exists is even worse...

...remember - no matter the color of our skin - we all bleed red.