As my co- workers know, one of my favorite stories in recent weeks has been lovingly related by the New York Post, that great City tab. It concerns that old devil, race. There is a supreme-court justice in New York named Donna Mills — no, not the dreamy actress from Knots Landing — and she is on trial for drunk driving.

Boy, was she drunk. Justice Mills slammed her dad's vintage Rolls- Royce into two parked cars; she was so drunk, she couldn't get out of the Rolls. When the cops came, she said — of course, because this is America! — "Are you arresting me because I'm black?"

No, they weren't. They were arresting her because she was drunk as a skunk and had plowed into two cars.

But here's the beauty part (or a further beauty part): The two cops arresting her — a man and a woman — were themselves black.

But that doesn't matter: The justice's principal defense at trial is still racial.

Post columnist Andrea Peyser has been on the scene. She reports the words of Mills's lawyer, Paul Gentile: "They [police commanders, apparently] selected two officers to handle the case. They chose the most inexperienced person on the scene . . . That person was a black female. She's partnered with a black male." My goodness, it sounds like a science program.

And why did "they" do this? According to the lawyer, they did it "so that one day . . . they could put people of color on the stand."