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07/03/2008: "Murder victim's burial stirs racial tension"

More than a year ago, an unidentified woman's body was found on a road, her dark hair shorn off, a plastic bag taped around her head, her hands severed. She had been strangled and tossed away by her killer.

Today, the crime remains unsolved, the murder victim's name is still unknown and efforts to bury her have set off controversy in Waller County -- a rural area just west of Houston that is long roiled by racial divisions.

The victim is white, while the funeral home and cemetery that a justice of the peace initially chose to handle her burial in Hempstead are historically black.

But Waller County Commissioners Court balked at paying for that burial. When activists started raising questions about the county's hesitation at burying the woman in a black cemetery, the commissioners asked a white-owned funeral home in Waller to handle arrangements.

[ Double standards. We can see what would happen when the boot is on the other foot. It is only right that people are ethnically loyal. When they complain they are treated unequally, it is only in order to increase their own ethnicity's advantage. ]

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/07/02/burial.dispute.ap/index.html