“American Gangster” opens in theaters this weekend, and it will be interesting to many to learn that the man who decimated Harlem in the 1960s and 1970’s and destroyed innumerable black families with his drug trade was a black man, Frank Lucas. It is also highly unlikely that the Reverend Al Sharpton will place blame on Lucas for the carnage he waged against his own community. When Rev. Sharpton recently threatened to come to Staten Island to protest District Attorney Daniel Donovan for not labeling an assault case a “hate crime,” it should have been clear to everyone how increasingly desperate the “Reverend” has become in manufacturing racial incidents instead of exposing the real ones that still plague this nation. Fresh from his success with the Jena Six incident in Louisiana and the resulting furor, Sharpton attempted to repeat his triumph here in New York with a fiery speech to supporters at the Harlem headquarters of his National Action Network. Rev. Sharpton called for a protest against the decision of Mr. Donovan to not immediately press hate-crime charges against the two men accused in the beating of 20-year-old Skylar McCormick of Elm Park. The beating was clearly a hate crime, Rev. Sharpton insisted, because the suspects charged in the incident, Daniel Avissato and Mark Vincent Maleto, allegedly only attacked the black man in the group and racial slurs were yelled. “If that ain’t enough evidence, then what is enough evidence?” Rev. Sharpton asked.

I contacted the Staten Island D.A.’s office to see if the Rev. Sharpton had followed up on his threatened protest, but as of this writing, he hadn’t. Perhaps he’s learned two things about Staten Island that may have dampened his enthusiasm. First, Mr. Donovan has a well deserved reputation for fairness and compassion for all residents. And secondly, there have been many incidents of black on white crime that were clearly hate crimes but never charged as such.

Both Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson managed to create a racial mountain out of a molehill by linking the arrest of six Jena youths who assaulted a white teen to a school prank three months earlier. According to the Jena News, the trouble started with the hanging of two nooses on a tree that was falsely reported to be a “whites only” tree. In reality, there was no such thing. At an earlier light-hearted assembly, a black student had jokingly asked if he could sit under the tree in the campus center. Everyone laughed when the principal told him, “Don’t go there.” He could sit anywhere he liked. Three white students were found to be the noose-hangers and were ordered to be removed from school and expelled. After a school board hearing to consider these recommendation the students were sentenced to spending a month in an alternative school followed by a two week in-school suspension. The students were also very remorseful and it was determined that they did not act out of hatred. They had many black friends whom they were sorry to have potentially offended.

Conservative talk show host and columnist Mychal Massie wrote in World Net Daily, “But on December 4, 2006, what has been described as one of the most violent attacks in Jena High School history was orchestrated by [Michael] Bell and six other black students on one unsuspecting white student. From all evidence and witness statements gathered, the attack of Justin Barker by Bell, Robert Bailey, and the five others had nothing whatsoever to do with, nor was it connected in any way to, the noose incident three months earlier.”

Now that these demagogues have stirred up racial discord in Jena, Louisiana, are they headed to Staten Island? Where was Al Sharpton when Megan Williams suffered even worse abuse than Tawana Brawley? The 20-year-old black woman was allegedly tortured, beaten, forced to eat feces — rat, dog, and human — and raped by six white men and women who held her for days in West Virgina.

Black Lawyers for Justice cofounder, Malik Shabazz, said “This case deserves national concern and national outrage. The Megan Williams case is 10 times, maybe 50 times, worse than what happened in Jena, Louisiana.”

I agree. Racism still exists in this country and its ugly reality needs to be exposed. It was just such brutality that he witnessed as a child in North Carolina that made Frank Lucas into the stone cold drug lord he ultimately became as an adult. Hate crimes are color blind. What a pity Al Sharpton is not.

acolon@nysun.com