The No.1 rule in America as laid forth by Ice T: Say what you want, but watch what you say.

Willie Randolph forgot that most important of rules when he suggested racial bias on the part of SNY, the Mets' television network, played a subliminal role in how he is depicted and perceived as manager.

When asked about the possibility of race's playing a role in camera shots that show him only in stoic form that makes him appear unemotional and uninvolved, Randolph responded, "It smells a little bit."

The media pounced on his words like they came out of Jeremiah Wright's mouth. The vilification of him, the gall of him. The last thing anyone wants to hear is race and racism injected into the state of affairs of a team with the highest payroll in the National League playing under-.500 baseball months after a season-ending collapse unseen in this generation.

So even the thought that the color of one's skin could play a role – or have any legitimate bearing – on how the performance and passion of a manager is perceived by the public and thus possibly have some weight on the manager's job security is incongruous.

But not inappropriate.

Because in Willie Randolph's case – as in most cases that involve a black man claiming racial victimization – the claim might not have merit but should always be heard. Nobody sees race from the vantage point of those who feel they are often the targets. It's where meaninglessness finds meaning.

Many asked for Randolph to validate his claim – suggesting he made incendiary comments with no specifics or evidence to back it up. They wanted proof. For every video clip of Randolph looking apathetic in the dugout, there are triple the number of clips of him looking like the most competent and confident manager in the majors. This is what makes Randolph's theory baseless in the eyes of millions. But it is also how racism inhales and exhales: through nondirect existence. In the mind of Willie Randolph, video verification was and is (even though he has since apologized for his original statement) not necessary. That's not what it's about. What it's about is the history of us and them. It's about a network or corporation doing something like that to someone like him (a black man in a management position in a sport in which the disintegrating numbers of African-American participation has become news). The evidence exists in more than just his mind, although unlike everything else in baseball, this isn't a stat.

It exists in the 1963 Louis Harris poll that appeared in Newsweek for which the conclusion was made that discrimination was not only the "central fact" of black life in America, but also 41 percent of black Americans felt the white man wanted to keep the "negro" in his place and 60 percent of white Americans felt that that same "negro" was not fit or ready to hold a better job or live in a better neighborhood.

It exists in the 1968 Kerner Commission study that concluded that "the majority of blacks expect little from whites other than hospitality, opposition, or at best indifference" and that because a "psychological distance exists between the races it makes it easy for each to develop misunderstandings, apprehension and mistrust."

It exists in the words of Henry Louis Gates when he wrote of America's acceptance of black men as seen through television, "As long as all blacks were represented in a demeaning or peripheral roles it is possible to believe that American racism was, as it were, indiscriminate"; in the ideology of Jerome Skolnick in his legendary report on "The Politics of Protest," in which he claims "a distinction must be made between institutional racism and individual prejudice, because of the influence of historical circumstances it is theoretically possible to have a racist society in which most of the individual members of that society do not express racist attitudes"; in the findings of Jannette Dates and William Barlow in their book "Split Image: African Americans in the Mass Media," in which the authors conclude that "throughout the 20th Century, whenever white image makers have developed media products (records, films, radio and television programs, news stories, and advertising campaigns) featuring African-Americans, they invariably did so in terms of codes and criteria based on their own racial and class background."

It exists in the words of Sharon Stone when she recently said to Diddy, who had joked at a charity auction at the Cannes Film Festival that he didn't have any money, "What … [have] you been spending it on crack?" And also in the misunderstanding of when Joe Biden called Barack Obama "articulate."

It is here where we find a failing Mets manager and his belief. On the racism equator, on that invisible line. Although at times claims such as these are unfounded, inaccurate and off base, accusations of race and racism, however far-fetched and disconnected to the situation, are often not wrong or baseless. Which is why Randolph's "suggestion" – even though it has nothing to do with his team's poor performance – needs to be taken not with a grain of salt, but with a chaser. Race sometimes burns when it goes down.

What race really is and how it plays into the fabric of the minds and lives of those it affects will never be understood until we understand it's never the person we need to find fault with when he or she ignites a racial disagreement. We need to recognize and respect the fact that too often a person's vantage point is what's invisible, not the person's claim. And then further understand that because it is invisible does not mean it any way, shape or form that it doesn't exist.

One black man's paranoia is another one's paradox.

In the paranoid paradox of Willie Randolph, the line is thin. And more than often, those who walk on it fall.