So, I understand that I risk looking foolish by exposing my ignorance and my only half-formed ideas on the subject, but I nonetheless need to explore this issue. I do this like I explore any issue -- by throwing it out there and seeing how it looks, then rearranging as appropriate. It's just the way I'm built; some internalize. I gotta get it out there. Better to risk looking foolish now than to not examine the issue and risk *doing* something stupid later.

I think.

There's also the painful reality that my many friends and family who happen to understand The Race Thing first-hand will be uncomfortable seeing me make a fool of myself like this. Let's face it: this is embarassing. I'm making an academic exercise about one of the most emotion-laden issues around. By exposing my ignorance to my dearest of friends and family who happen to have a different background than me, well... I hope you'll understand that *I'm* just trying to understand. And, I'm starting this out by trying to understand just how much I *don't* understand.

First of all, let me state something that can only sound obnoxious, but I believe it to be true, nonetheless. When I meet people, *yes* I notice their appearance (including their skin color, et al), but I honestly believe that I don't *assess* them on the basis of their physical traits. In this day and age, that can only sound like bullshit (and like self-serving denial), but let me try to explain.

Let's put this in the grossest of terms, because I think you *will* understand. When a heterosexual man encounters a woman he has never met before, he will react to a number of attributes he encounters. He may, for example, find himself physically attracted to her bust, her butt, her face, her neck, her hands, her hair. He may go crazy (or not) with lust over her voice. Her eyes. And yet, another man might not even give a second thought to these very same attributes. So, Mr. Smith meets Jane Doe and immediately notices her full, shapely breasts. Mr. Smith is a breast man. He can't stop thinking about the large and inviting bust-line of Ms. Doe. Mr. Jones walks up and meets Mr. Smith and Ms. Doe. Mr. Jones is not a breast man. He likes butts. Breasts don't really do it for him (even though Ms. Doe believe that every man she meets is only interested in her breasts), and Ms. Doe's bust in particular is of no interest to him. Since her figure otherwise has nothing terribly attractive to him (her butt being somewhat not his type), he does not end up focusing on her as a sexual being. She's just another woman he is meeting. That's all.

This isn't an essay about sexual attraction (now that I've alienated another large segment of the audience), it's about perception. Ms. Doe, because she has been physically endowed with a chest that gets an awful lot of attention, can't quite grasp the idea that NOT ALL MEN ARE INTERESTED IN HER OVERSIZED BREASTS. And, yet, some men simply don't care. Doesn't phase them at all. And, note, I'm still talking about heterosexual men, in this metaphor. In this example, Mr. Jones can talk with Ms. Doe and not have a single thought about sex. At least, he's not thinking about sex with her.

Like anybody else, I make assessments of the people I meet based upon any number of attributes. And, I *do* notice skin color, shape of face, voice, eyes, language, weight, all that stuff. But, for whatever reason, I'm just not interested in most of that stuff. Grooming habits probably register more deeply in me than skin color. Eyes matter a lot. They reveal a lot. A dishevled shifty-eyed white guy will always worry me more than any black man in a suit. (Except for Don King, ha, ha.)

Now, I could go on for another thirty paragraphs about why I think this might be the case for me (parental upbringing; unique experiences in my high school, mental defects, whatever), but this isn't about "look how non-racist I am." Rather, it's a starting point for understanding just why it is I *don't* understand.

I want to tell you about my Uncle Philip. Phil is great. He's only five years older than me, and we grew up in close proximity for many years of my youth. He sharpened my chess game, let me use his computer (remember the TI 99/4?), tried to explain the Theory of Relativity to me. He's a great guy.

Now, he *also* happens to have been born with Cerebral Palsey. So, this affects his speech and his motor control. Talking with him is difficult, at first, until you get used to his speech. Anyway, Phil came to visit me my senior year at Cornell, and we went to a Cornell hockey game. I drove us to the parking lot by Lynah Rink and started looking for a place to park.

"Allan. What are you doing?"

"I'm looking for a place to park."

"Park there!"

"But, that's a handicapped spot!"

I am such an idiot.

In my mind, I'm not thinking "Ooh, I have a handicapped person in my car." It's just my Uncle Phil. One of the most brilliant minds I know.

This is an example of how patently stupid I can be when it comes to keeping in mind very obvious physical realities of someone else's existence.

A similar incident occurred more recently, when I had the pleasure of joining my friend Harry from Cornell at a little soiree at his house. Harry was News Director when I first began working in the News Department at WVBR, and he was one of my first and most enduring mentors there. Harry went on to become a reporter for the NPR station in San Francisco. Very cool dude with a very sharp intellect.

Anyway, many cities later, he and I both live in the same town again, and he invited me over to his place. As it turns out, I was one of only two white people at the event. Everyone else there was Asian-American. I didn't even notice it at the time. But, we all ended up settling into this excellent discussion about the radio business and the software industry, and the subject of discrimination came up. I was surprised, at first, when they started talking about how NPR doesn't have any minorities in its upper ranks, etc., etc. What surprised me wasn't the facts that they brought up; what surprised me was... they were talking about themselves. ie, this topic was immediately relevant to *them*. And, I'm thinking to myself, "But, Harry, what are you talking about? You're not a minority. You're Harry!" (Unlike my conversation above with Philip, I actually didn't say this out loud.)

So, you see, I'm an idiot. (Sorry, Harry. Sorry, Philip. I hope you both can forgive me. I can only hope I have other redeeming qualities.) And, this particular kind of idiocy has led me to completely not get The Race Thing. The concept of "minorities in executive positions" has always been an academic subject for me. But, it *isn't* an academic subject. Real people are facing real glass ceilings on the basis of physical attributes that have nothing to do with their abilities.

More to the point, *some* people's *entire lives* are shaped by the fact of thier ethnic background. And, this fact is leading to huge injustices on both sides of the racial divide.

Tune in for the next installment, wherein Allan the Idiot brings up O. J. Simpson and the criminal justice system over lunch with some co-workers of multiple ethnic backgrounds, and watch as the fun ensues.