Bacon's Rebellion

  • Calling All Energy-Conservation Entrepreneurs

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    James A. Bacon

    As required by newly enacted state law, the State Corporation Commission is holding a “proceeding” to determine if state electricity conservation goals — cutting electricity consumption, based on 2006 levels, by 10 percent by 2022 — can be achieved cost effectively.

    The SCC staff will invite all the usual suspects: electric and gas utilities, independent power producers, consumer groups, environmental groups and the others whose lobbyists make themselves known. The SCC, in all likelihood, will not go out of its way to notify entrepreneurial companies in the business of electricity conservation who aren’t large enough to hire lobbyists and whose business model is not predicated on rent-seeking behavior.

    One prospect comes immediately to mind. Richmond-based Tridium, where my wife works, specializes in creating software platforms that allow proprietary softwares controlling a wide variety of devices to communicate with one another. One of Tridium’s primary markets is building automation, and one of the driving forces behind building automation is energy conservation. Tridium is not a little jinky start-up. It was acquired last year by Honeywell, a major manufacturer of automated controls, and it does business globally. My wife recently returned from a business trip to Dubai and the Netherlands.

    Tridium knows electric conservation. Tridium knows how to reduce electric consumption on a large scale in commercial and industrial settings. Tridium should have a seat at the table. Whether the company, which is in fast-growth mode, will be able to spare an employee to engage in months of jaw-jaw with professional lobbyists is another question entirely.

    How many other businesses are out there whose business models are built on saving money by reducing electric consumption? How many vendors of energy-saving appliances and gadgets are out there? How many of them will offer any input into the achievability of reducing electric consumption by a modest 2/3 of one percent per year? How will their absence affect the goals set by the SCC?

    If you work for a company in the business of electric conservation, you need to be part of the process. Click here to find out more information.

  • Tim Kaine’s Urban Policy: Spend Mo’ Money

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    James A. Bacon

    The Kaine administration has quietly made public its “Urban Policy Report” by posting it on the website of the Secretariat of Commerce and Trade. The report, which results from the labors of a task force appointed by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine a year ago, never got much publicity. I don’t recall any articles written about in the Mainstream Media, and I couldn’t even find a notice of it among the Governor’s press releases for the past three months. Furthermore, no one seems willing to claim the report: Although the task force participants are listed, the authorship is anonymous.

    The purpose of the report was to outline achievable goals, actions and measurable benchmarks to track the progress of Virginia’s “urban” areas, defined as areas with population over 50,000 and density exceeding 1,000 per square mile. It encompasses both older cities and urbanizing counties.

    The report cites five broad goals:

    1. Promote economic integration in urban jurisdications and surrounding region (as a means of combatting inner city poverty).

    2. Improve the educational attainment and workforce readiness of urban populations.

    3. Strengthen the economic competitiveness of urban jurisdictions and surrounding areas.

    4. Ensure a high quality of life in urban areas.

    5. Ensure that urban infrastructure, transportation systems and the environment will support a prosperous future for current citizens.

    All worthy goals, to be sure. But in recommendation after recommendation, the report calls for more vigorous action by state and local government. The common theme can be summarized succinctly: Spend mo’ money. By contrast, nowhere does the report hint that perhaps reducing taxes to stimulate economic activity might exercise a palliative effect.

    Unfortunately for the Kaniacs, with state economic growth slowing, two rounds of tax increases since 2004, and the end of double-digit increases in state revenues, “mo’ money” is not likely to materialize. Just guessing: Budgetary realities may explain why the Governor never cranked up his spin machine for this report.

  • On Track for 400,000 Acres Conserved

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    James A. Bacon

    Gov. Timothy M. Kaine isn’t waiting for others to act in order to meet his goal of conserving 400,000 acres of open space in the Commonwealth by the end of his four-year term. Meeting with local leaders to celebrate the easement of 4,000 acres along the Rappahannock River recently, he told the following story, according to the Free Lance-Star:

    Instead of waiting for landowners to start talking to state agencies about using easements and other tools to protect their land, Kaine said state officials — and sometimes the governor himself–are now trying to start those talks.

    He told a story about canoeing on the James River in Botetourt County last July 3 and taking out at a farm. Kaine asked the landowner if the farm was under conservation easement. It wasn’t, but the owner seemed interested. So Kaine had Secretary of Natural Resources Preston Bryant call him on July 4, and the 700-acre property is now preserved forever under a conservation easement.

    In 2006, Kaine’s first term, 95,000 acres of Virginia land were preserved — about double the rate before then. But Kaine said he would have to step up his efforts to meet his goal. State officials are going after big chunks of land — 10,000-20,000 acres per shot. As a result, the Governor has been talking to paper companies with huge holdings of forest land.

  • Midlothian Leviathan

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    James A. Bacon

    Chesterfield County is the last place on the planet you’d expect to see commuter rail. Characterized by scattered, disconnected, low-density development and communities designed around the movement of automobiles, Richmond’s southern suburb epitomizes the autocentric society that destroyed mass transit in the 20th century.

    Ironically, Chesterfield enjoyed a vibrant commuter rail scene at the turn of the 20th century — before local government mandated “suburban” style zoning and state government began subsidizing leapfrog development. Some 100 years after commuter rail’s hey-day, developers are trying to revive the idea. Two large planned communities, Roseland and Watkins Centre, would like to see commuter rail running along an underutilized Norfolk Southern railway track from downtown Richmond out to their projects near the Rt. 288 circumferential highway.

    The Richmond Metropolitan Planning Organization sketched the outlines of Midlothian commuter rail project in a 2003 study, which should be updated this fall. But the study was none too optimistic: An up-front capital investment of $81 million plus ongoing operating deficit of $1 million annually would take only 170 passengers per workday off the roads. Not a very good return on investment. Judged by the study’s ridership metrics, Midlothian commuter rail is a poor candidate for state and federal funding.

    But, as I outline in today’s column, “Midlothian Leviathan,” there may be a way to establish commuter rail as a profit-driven enterprise. Readers of this blog will find the key concepts familiar: (1) Set up Community Development Authorities around the rail stations, (2) pay for the capital improvements by issuing CDA bonds, (3) pay back the bonds through tax-increment financing on property owners in the CDA, (4) overlay the CDA districts with Transit Oriented Development districts, (5) incentivize property owners to re-develop their properties by increasing densities around the stations, and (6) require developers to set up Transportation Demand Management programs to mitigate the impact of localized congestion on nearby residential neighborhoods.

    Under the Bacon schema, Midlothian commuter rail would require no government funding whatsoever. It would require no government coercion, no exercise of eminent domain to strong-arm anyone into participating. It would put into place measures to offset negative impacts on neighbors. And the rail line would fly, so to speak, only if it constituted a win-win-win for Chesterfield County, the City of Richmond, property owners, neighbors and commuters.

    Sound like a tall order? You bet. I fully acknowledge that I may have set the bar so high that the project would never work. But I lay out a developer-driven strategy that has never been tried before, at least not in Virginia, and not in recent history. Please check it out and point out any flaws you might see — or any possibilities that I might have overlooked.

  • Rabble Rousing at Its Best: Bacon’s Rebellion

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    James A. Bacon

    Aesthetes of the world, why trouble yourself with those mangey, lesser blogs when you can indulge in the very finest of social agitation and political perturbations at the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine? You can view the July 2, 2007 edition right here.

    Don’t miss a single malcontented issue — sign up for a free subscription here.

    Here are this week’s offerings:

    Midlothian Leviathan
    The impact of a Midlothian commuter rail project on the Richmond region could be enormous — if Chesterfield County puts into place the necessary zoning and special tax districts.
    by James A. Bacon

    Double Shot
    Virginians are finally debating the convoluted new law that punishes “abusive drivers” twice: with fines and fees. A little late, but better than never.
    by Doug Koelemay

    Still No Exit
    Earth is the only biosphere we’ve got. Gliese 581-C-A, the closest potentially earth-like planet yet discovered, is 20 light-years away. We must build a sustainable civilization here at home.
    by EM Risse

    Slow and Unsteady
    Economic growth will slow in Virginia next year. Short-term, we must restrain state government spending to match. Long-term, we need to devise a fix for boom-bust budgeting.
    by Michael Thompson

    A Party Divided Shall Stand
    Discord in the Republican Party is a sign of healthy struggle between the People and politicians who have been co-opted by the political system.
    by James Atticus Bowden

    Annoy a Politician
    Bypass the political establishment: Support an Initiative & Referendum amendment to the state constitution.
    By Norman Leahy

    Nice & Curious Questions
    The Tribes of Virginia: American Indians in the Commonwealth
    by Edwin S. Clay III and Patricia Bangs

  • It Could Be Worse: We Could Be Driving in California

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    James A. Bacon

    Virginia has the 18th best road system in the country in 2004, according to a national survey published by the Reason Foundation. That’s a far-from-stellar performance, but we can console ourselves that we outperform our neighbors in Maryland (38th) and North Carolina (31st). However, the sour pusses among you can take heart that Virginia’s performance fell significantly from the previous year, when it had ranked 11th.

    The rankings combine two sets of measures: roadway quality and performance measures, and cost measures. States ranking the highest tend to offer a combination of superior performance at lower cost.

    As a generality, Virginia fared well in cost measures — we spend considerably less on our roads than other states — but enjoy middling performance levels.

    We ranked 8th lowest in the country in receipts per state-controlled mile: $55,063. That compares to a low of $36,890 in South Carolina and a high of $2,370,630 (not a misprint!!) in New Jersey (Can anyone say “Mafia-dominated construction unions?”)

    Virginia was the 2nd lowest state in the country for Capital & Bridge disbursements per
    state-controlled mile, 27th lowest for maintenance disbursements, and 7th lowest in administrative disbursements.

    In the critical performance measure “urban interstate congestion,” Virginia ranked 21st best with 42.54 percent of our interstate miles congested. A handful of western and Great Plains states enjoy zero percent interstate congestion, but the numbers are high throughout the East Coast. The comparable numbers in Maryland: 68.58 percent. In North Carolina: 72.47 percent.

    With 83.33 percent congested interstate miles, California has the worst interstates in the country.

  • Surprise Hot Story of the Week: Abuser Fees

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    James A. Bacon

    In the absence of a more compelling political narrative during the summer doldrums, the issue of abuser fees for reckless drivers has become the issue du jour in the Mainstream Media. A half dozen newspapers, plus the Associated Press, published articles on the topic yesterday.

    Down in Martinsville, the abusive driver fees have become a campaign issue. Jeff Evans, a Republican candidate for state Senate, has attacked his opponent, state Sen. Roscoe Reynolds, D-Ridgeway, for introducing a version of the law on the behalf of Gov. Timothy M. Kaine. As quoted in the Martinsville Bulletin, Evans said in a press release:

    “Of course [the fees] will place an undue burden on any of our low-income citizens and cause many more to simply ignore the law and place themselves in danger of serving jail time. Even worse, it applies only to Virginia residents. That is just not right.”

    The same day, someone raised the out-of-state angle during the call-in radio show with Gov. Timothy M. Kaine. The Governor opened the possibility of extending the abuser fees for reckless driving and Driving Under the Influence to out-of-state drivers.

    The idea sounds reasonable — why should Virginians be held to a higher standard? But as Christina Nuckols with the Virginian-Pilot explains, the matter gets complicated very quickly.

    The fees are currently treated as civil penalties collected by the Department of Motor Vehicles. If you don’t pay the fee, your driver’s license could be suspended. The fees would have to be changed to criminal fines in order to collect from out-of-state drivers.

    Virginia’s constitution earmarks all court fines to be spent on school construction and teacher retirement benefits. The bad-driver fees were adopted to generate new money for road maintenance.

    Meanwhile, House Speaker William J. Howell has responded to criticism in the Free Lance-Star: The Kaine administration, he wrote in a column, estimates that only 150,000 people, 2.5 percent of all licensed drivers, would have been affected during the past few years. Further, writes Howell:

    A cursory check of the facts would have found that abuser fees have worked successfully in New Jersey, where the number of demerit points drivers have accrued for dangerous driving has fallen since that state’s fees were introduced. The direct results of Virginia’s plan will be better driving, safer roads, less traffic congestion due to accidents, and more money for transportation.

    Seems to me that we should have had this debate before the law was passed. Bacon’s Rebellion raised a number of issues during the transportation debate, but in the stampede to find new revenue sources, only a handful of others questioned the law. To this day, I have yet to see an an article that quotes Virginia traffic judges for their opinions of what the law might mean. We have only begun to explore the ramifications of this issue.

  • Challenged in Chesterfield

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    James A. Bacon

    Chesterfield County makes an interesting petrie dish for studying development. The county of 300,000 residents has a vast overhang of land zoned for residential housing– enough for 43,000 new dwelling units, according to Scott Bass’ article in Style Weekly. And the Board of Supervisors continues to rezone more land, at least for quality projects such as the proposed mixed-use Roseland development near the intersection of Midlothian Turnpike and Rt. 288, which is adding 5,000 houses, condos and apartments to the building stock. The Southern Environmental Law Center is projecting growth of 125,000 housing units by 2030.

    Most of the development, however, is small-scale and piecemeal: following the classic suburban pattern of walled off shopping centers and cul de sac subdivisions. There are very few mixed-use neighborhoods (although some are on the drawing boards). The pod-like pattern of development offers very little connectivity between the different pieces. As a consequence, Chesterfield residents rely upon a relatively small number of connector roads and arterials to get around. Compounding the problem, the county actively discourages mass transit.

    Despite the gift of newly constructed Rt. 288, paid for by the state, traffic congestion is heading to gridlock. The county lacks the means to build its way out of its jam. Although Chesterfield collects proffers of $15,600 per house on land rezoned today, houses on property rezoned in the early 1990s may yield proffers of as little as $2,000. The state, which runs Chesterfield roads, has very little money to contribute. And unlike Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, the Richmond region is not empowered to raise taxes for regional road projects.

    Meanwhile, NIMBYs, reacting to the increased pressure on roads, schools and county finances, want to curtail growth through such ill-conceived measures as minimum lot sizes that would smear growth over larger areas that are even more expensive to serve with roads, utilities and public services.

    What’s a county to do? One proposal I’ve heard is to give the go-ahead to developers of large, mixed-use projects who have the knowledge and financial backing to build well-planned, well-conceived communities. Given a choice between living in pedestrian-friendly communities with a wide range of amenities available nearby or living in disaggregated, auto-dependent subdivisions, people will flock to the quality projects. The good stuff will get built, the argument goes, and the bad stuff won’t. Maybe. The hitch is that the large mixed-use projects are located on the urban periphery and rely upon Rt. 288 and a handful of other roads for connectivity with the rest of the metro area. Those roads will quickly get overloaded.

    The other strategy is revitalization of older suburbs, an example of which is the re-development proposed for the aging Cloverleaf Mall just off the Chippenham Parkway. But re-development works only when developers can increase density, and that doesn’t appear to be something that Chesterfield is willing to do on anything other than a spot, case-by-case basis.

    In next week’s e-zine, I will explore a third strategy: Encourage transit-oriented development along a commuter rail line running from the proposed Roseland project on Rt. 288 through Midlothian and into downtown Richmond. Follow Arlington’s example in zoning for higher density around the rail stops. And use Community Development Authorities to pay the up-front cost of setting up the heavy rail operation. Read the details Monday.

  • Virginia as a “Low Tax” State

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    James A. Bacon

    It’s time to put to rest the notion that Virginia is a low-tax state, or even a moderate/low tax state. On page R8 of its June 11, 2007, “Economic Round Up,” the Wall Street Journal published a chart, “Feeding the Government”, that ranked “total local, state and federal tax burdens as a percentage of each state’s income.”

    Virginia ranked 18th from the top — as in, 18th highest, not lowest. Virginia’s tax burden was a hair above the national average but higher than 32 other states. Our tax burden: 32.9 percent of total income. Connecticut had the highest with 38.3 percent, Oklahoma the lowest, with 27.8 percent.

    We’re accustomed to seeing Virginia rank better in state rankings. That’s because most rankings compare total state and local government spending only. But here’s the problem: The federal tax code doesn’t adjust for cost of living. When states and regions have a high cost of living (as Northern Virginia does), its nominal wage levels tend to be higher. Given the highly progressive structure of the federal tax code, nominally affluent regions wind up paying higher taxes.

    Insofar as state/local government policies create dysfunctional human settlement patterns, as they do in Northern Virginia, Virginia’s political economy is directly responsible for high living costs, and indirectly responsible for high tax rates. So, let’s stop the drivel about Virginia being a “low tax” state, and get on with the business of cutting the cost of government, reforming dysfunctional human settlement patterns, and making out tax burden less onerous.

  • Where Dysfunctional Zoning Policy Meets Dysfunctional Immigration Policy

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    James A. Bacon

    I can understand why homeowners get upset when someone buys a house in the neighborhood and then leases out rooms to unskilled, semi-literate immigrants, who proceed to trash the place. Responding to the proliferation of illegal boarding houses, Fairfax County officials have begun cracking down by strictly enforcing zoning codes. (See the Fairfax County Times story.)

    But it appears that part of the problem is of the county’s own making. The mortgage on a modest, middle-class rambler can cost $4,000 to $5,000 per month. Very few households can afford that on their own. That is one of the motivations for leasing out individuals rooms for up to $600 or $700 per month. (See the companion story in the Fairfax County Times.)

    Marta Reyes … lives with her husband and two young children in a small, beige rambler with a perfectly manicured lawn on Frederick Avenue in Springfield.

    Rooms rent for $400 month. She said that 11 people live in the house and that she would rent to six more. Her mortgage is $4,000 a month and, like many who rent out their homes, she said, “I can’t pay for the house myself.”

    Clearly, there is a shortage of affordable housing. It doesn’t cost $4,000 a month to mortgage middle-class houses in fast-growth cities like Atlanta or Houston. That price reflects scarcity of supply — a scarcity induced by zoning policies that discourage construction of low/moderate-income housing.

    The underlying cause of illegal boarding is clouded by the immigration issue. Most of the inhabitants of the illegal boarding houses are of Hispanic origin (Honduran in the case of the woman profiled by the Times), so there is a presumption that they are here illegally. Maybe the are, maybe they aren’t, I don’t know. If they are illegal, they shouldn’t be here — which means that we need to repair our dysfunctional immigration policy, too.

    Update: The City of Winchester, population 25,000, has received 94 overcrowding complaints since July 2006, according to the Winchester Star.

  • Five Bikers, Two Miles, $16 Million

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    James A. Bacon

    I’m a big fan of bike lanes, as Bacon’s Rebellion readers know — but there are limits to how much money we should spend on them. Apparently, the Chesapeake City Council agrees. Yesterday the council voted to reverse a previous decision to build a two-mile, $16 million bike path paralleling a road that currently has only five bikers per day. (See today’s article in the Virginian-Pilot.)

    As Virginian-Pilot columnist Kerry Dougherty railed last week:

    Despite the price, all but one council member at the meeting merrily voted “yes.” And why not? The cash wasn’t coming out of Chesapeake’s coffers. This would be mostly federal and state transportation dollars.

    Defending his affirmative vote, Vice Mayor Dwight Parker explained that Chesapeake couldn’t use the $16 million for anything but the bike path. “If we don’t use it,” he told me. “We lose it.” Sheesh.

    That’s the quality of decision making you get when the federal government doles out money with all sorts of strings attached. The feds ought to get out of the local transportation funding business and stick to projects of national significance. It’s not clear what the state’s role was in this narrowly averted fiasco, but whatever it was, it suggests that someone is not doing a very good job of prioritizing the investment of scarce state tax dollars. Let’s hope that the NoVa and Hampton Roads regional transportation authorities are more careful. (See the previous blog entry.)

  • NoVa’s Transportation Money Geyser: Sidewalks, Signs and Bike Lanes

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    James A. Bacon

    As the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority prepares to approve a slew of taxes and fees expected to yield $300 million a year, the first new projects in the pipeline are coming into view. According to the Fairfax County Times, a $102 million list of projects for Fairfax County include:

    • $10 million for pedestrian upgrades to the Route 1 corridor
    • $6.1 million for upgraded signs at Virginia’s 20 Metrorail stations
    • $2.5 million for gutter, sidewalk and bike lane improvements at Chain Bridge Road and Eaton Place
    • $29 million for the Fair Lakes interchange with the Fairfax County Parkway.

    Pedestrian upgrades? Metrorail signage? Bike lanes? Wow. It’s nice to know that something other than mega road projects are getting funding. What I’d like to see in addition to the list of projects, though, is some kind of return on investment analysis. Inquiring minds want to know.

  • Who the Real Ideologues Are

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    James A. Bacon

    The Roanoke Times has joined a justifiably long list of observers appalled by the prospect of imposing punitive fines for driving offenses — fines that will (a) encourage more people to contest their tickets, (b) clog the courts, and eventually (c) start jamming local jails with working-class stiffs who, unable to pay the fines, will lose their licenses and then get arrested for driving without a license. It won’t take long before these flaws are manifest to all.

    I take no issue with the Times’ criticism of the punitive fines, or even its endorsement of gasoline taxes as a preferred source of transportation revenue. But I do take issue with its kneejerk characterization of the General Assembly. Writes the Times editorialist: “Motorists can thank the General Assembly’s anti-tax ideologues in the House of Delegates who refused even to consider tax increases to pay for the state’s needed highway improvements.”

    Got that? Anyone who opposes tax increases is an “ideologue.”

    As opposed to pro-tax advocates who are… what, exactly?

    By my recollection, the Axis of Taxes has been agitating just as long and hard for higher taxes as their anti-tax foes have been resisting them. But more successfully. Taxes are going up in Virginia this year, not down — a fact that apparently has escaped the notice of the Campbell Ave. crew. Likewise, if the anti-taxers “refused even to consider” tax increases, what can be said of the Axis of Taxes? The pro-tax crowd has just as steadfastly “refused even to consider” any transportation strategy that doesn’t entail higher taxes: strategies such as congestion pricing, an end to government mass-transit monopolies and, most important, reform of human settlement patterns to encourage fewer and shorter automobile trips.

    At least the “anti-tax ideologues” passed legislation that restructures the way in which state and local governments build and maintain roads. The changes, though shamefully under-reported by the press, are comprehensive and far reaching. By contrast, the Axis of Taxes never relinquished its monomaniacal advocacy of tax-build, tax-build as the solution for all transportation ills. With the exception of Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, tax advocates never offered one solution that didn’t require mo’ money. Not one.

    Yes, the punitive fines are an abomination, and I’m betting that they will be repealed eventually. But they might never have been necessary if the Axis of Taxes and its enablers in the punditry hadn’t taken such a hard line and had thought more creatively about how to improve mobility and accessibility.

  • Eeeeee! We’re Not Growing Fast Enough!

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    James A. Bacon

    Here’s a novel predicament: Virginia Beach city council members are worried because they’re experiencing too little residential growth.

    Reports Dierdre Fernandes with the Virginian-Pilot: “When City Council members approved increased development in the Princess Anne area, they assumed that hundreds of high-cost homes would quickly replace the woods and soybean fields and help pay for much-needed road improvements.”

    That hasn’t happened.

    In 2003, the City Council approved up to 3,000 homes for the transition area, 9,600 acres between the suburban north and rural south.

    In the past four years, the council has allowed for 1,376 potential homes. But by the month’s end, 50 are expected to have been sold. That’s far less than the 700 homes Beach officials projected would be generating tax money by this point. …

    The transition area funding plan had called for a portion of real estate revenue from projects … to be set aside for road projects in Princess Anne. A city analysis showed that the overall development in the transition area could pay for itself and create a $187 million surplus in tax revenue.

    Residential development a good thing? Virginia Beach must be using a different econometric model from the localities in Northern Virginia. Somebody needs to revisit some core assumptions guiding their growth-management policies.

    (Hat tip to reader Steve Horton for this story.)

  • Whatever Else You Do, Do NOT Think about Elephants!

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    James A. Bacon

    Edith White, president of the Hampton Roads branch of the Urban League, says apology resolutions and expressions of regret for slavery, in Virginia and in other states, are a step in the right direction. According to the Associated Press, White hopes that the resolutions will “get more people talking about race.”

    Yeah, that’s a big problem in our society today, isn’t it? Not enough talking about race.

    Supposedly, it’s conservatives like me who are obsessed with race. In truth, people like Edith White — and, it appears, Associated Press reporter Kim O’Brien Root — are far more fixated on peoples’ racial identity than I’ll ever be.

    In raising our son, now nine, my wife and I never used racial classifications. We never described our African-American neighbors as “black” as a way to distinguish between us and them. We never referred to athletes or entertainers on television as “black.” We never alluded to our fellow citizens as “black” or “negro” or “African American.” Race may be a political reality in our society, but we wanted to raise Jamie to be color blind.

    I think we succeeded. By the time he was six or seven, Jamie did begin to observe and comment upon the fact that some people had darker skin tones than we did. It was a matter of curiosity, though, not one of substance. Lacking a vocabulary to describe “blacks,” he invented his own phrase, one we never used: “dark-skinned people.” To this day, I am proud to say, race has never been a factor in his interaction with friends, peers and teachers.

    As old as I am, I find that it takes an act of will to ignore race. Our society is so obsessed with the issue that I’m reminded of the old joke, “Whatever else you do, don’t… repeat, do NOT… think about elephants!” The harder you try not to think about elephants (or race), the more you will think about them. My son is learning about the history of slavery and the mistreatment of African Americans in his school. As he gets older he, too, will get caught up in the U.S. obsession with race. But I am hopeful that as an adult, he will find all the fuss about skin color to be baffling. I hope that he not only will judge people by the content of their character but find the hue of a man’s skin to be as incidental as the color of his hair or his eyes.

    So, I totally disagree with Edith White. I think we need to talk less about race. We need to talk more about the kind of personal values and public policies that will enable everyone, regardless of race, to participate fully in our society. The drum-beat of race, race, race around the clock only reinforces the invidious distinction that the Edith Whites of the world supposedly deplore.

    Of course, that is not entirely accidental. The people who gain the most from the obsession with race are not the old-timey southern racists who want to “keep blacks in their place,” but those who gain politically from maintaining a sense of black grievance and alienation, and those who nurture a sense of moral superiority over those omni-present racists lurking in the shadows. I have no sympathy for those people whatsoever. They are leechers of blood and peddlers of snake oil, prolonging the very illness they seek to heal.

Now Available

Book cover of 'Dust Mites: A Second American Revolution' by James A. Bacon, featuring astronauts planting a flag with a blue and white emblem on a lunar landscape, with Earth visible in the background.
For sale on Amazon.com

The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….

This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.

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