[Editor's note: I wrote this a few years back, and despite the fact that
portions of it are politically out-of-date, the basic premise beneath it
still remains the same. Hence it is included in this archive]

                 
                  A Report for Discerning Adults Everywhere 
               WHAT KNOWING ADULTS ARE DOING TO ASSUAGE THEIR
                       LIBERAL GUILT OVER LOS ANGELES


You are white, upper-middle class, drive a new car and live on a 20 acre
mini-ranch in the Spokane Valley. In general, you have excellent job
security at your upper-echelon job working for Hanford/Westinghouse as a
media consultant. After reading an article on civic responsibility in Money
Magazine, you begin attending to your civic responsibilities by joining the
Republican Party Central Steering Committee for Eastern Washington. 

You have avoided dealing with anyone from another race, not because of any
particular hatred, but because you have managers and staffers handle that
sort of thing. Yet, watching the news photos from the Riots in Los Angeles,
you realize, with a start, that you are feeling vaguely guilty about your
ignorance of racial and poverty issues, much less your inability to feel
comfortable around any persons of color. 

Timidly, you ask around the clubhouse after a round of golf with your
associates what others are doing to cope with their feelings over racial
alienation, only to discover that half of your peers are secret admirers of
the Aryan Nations over in Hayden Lake. The rest are, course, the obligatory
undercover agents that everyone has known about since they started working
for Westinghouse. 

The first step to assuaging your guilt is to truly get to know a person of
color. Hadely, who works in your office might do, but since he is the only
African-American man in your entire division, he might already be swamped
with such requests. Thinking you may have look further afield, you drive up
to the Tri-Cities after midnight late one evening where you are promptly
robbed of your credit cards, the Mercedes and your $5000 silk suit by a
Mexican gal with whom you were just getting acquainted. From your driver's
license, the girl's friends obtained your home address so when you finally
manage to hitch a ride back Spokane, you find your wife and children eagerly
waiting for you bound and gagged. Your entire French art collection, the
twenty-foot television, all the appliances and your wife's Mercedes Benz are
all gone. 

Your second effort, selected for being less embarrassing to explain to your
insurance company, much less your wife, consists of inviting a friend of
Hadely's over for dinner. The charming young couple both have recently
immigrated from Gambia, an abysmally small country somewhere in Africa. You
are proud of the fact that, for nearly two hours, you have been chatting
happily away, feeling the guilt slowly ooze from your pores. 

Your wife calls everyone to the dinner table, but when you start cut the
huge, dripping beef roast she has thoughtfully prepared, you discover, to
your chagrin, that they do not speak a word of english. Furthermore, they do
not eat meat. Something about their religion, it seems. You are both
completely mortified when your guests make a hasty departure without staying
for dessert. 

Finally, out of desperation, you throw all caution to the winds and begin
plotting a sure means of making new inroads in developing good racial
relations. You will become one of THEM. You stop buy a seedy- looking used
car lot down on Sprague Avenue and purchase a 7 year old Pontiac. After
spending two hours with the lot mechanic getting it run, after stashing the
Mercedes at their shop, you drive in your "new" car to one of the thrift
shops nearby and purchase yourself a pair of used blue jeans, used pair
tennis shoes and badly-faded sweatshirt, hurriedly changing out of your suit
and tie their dressing room. When you drive away from the Thrift Shop, you
drive less than mile before a policeman pulls you over for excessive exhaust
smoke. Half hour and a $65.00 fix-it ticket later, you are disgusted.

Finally, you drive the junker car back where you first purchased it,
retrieve the Mercedes, and in a dark corner the garage, hurriedly change
back into your business suit. 

You have decided live with your guilt, and damned the consequences. The
expenses trying fit in with the black and empoverished simply are not worth
it.

And then you wonder WHY racial relations between African-Americans and White
People is so damned screwed up? Look in the damned mirror.